Dead Roses for a Blue Lady (16 page)

I envied Sadler and the simplicity of his vengeance. All he had to do was avenge Kiko and himself against a finite, mortal enemy. And when the time came, he knew if his job was well and truly finished. In those last moments Sadler had known no lingering rage, no doubt, and most of all, no fear of whatever awaits on the other side.

I wondered what it would be like to surrender the cold thrill of vendetta; to be at one not only with myself, but with what I had become, and succumb to that final, unending peace.

Perhaps that day will eventually come. But I know one thing—it is not coming soon.

As I said before, most of the stories I find myself entangled in prove to be no more than variations on a theme.

Including my own.

Some Velvet Morning

She was the most attractive woman he'd ever seen outside a movie theater. She was not just pretty, she was beautiful, the way models and starlets are beautiful. Her skin was creamy, as translucent as pearl, with long, wavy hair the color of raw honey. Her fire engine red lips matched her low-cut one-piece with spaghetti straps and revealing side-slit.

She was wearing black patent leather open-toed shoes with four-inch heels, which showed that her toe nails, as well as fingernails, were painted the exact same shade as her lips. And she was smiling at him from across the hotel bar.

First he had to double check to make sure there wasn't another, younger man sitting

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) directly behind him before he dared respond. No. There wasn't anyone else she could possibly be paying attention to. It had to be him.

"Hey, buddy," he said, pushing a ten across the damp bar top. "I'd like to buy that lady a drink."

The bartender nodded and palmed the bill without saying a word. A couple of minutes later a fresh Bloody Mary was placed in front of the woman in red.

She lifted the drink in a half-toast and smiled at him. And this time there was no mistaking it: she was smiling one hundred percent at him.

He nervously slicked back his thinning hair and coughed lightly into his fist, surreptitiously sniffing it to make sure his breath was passable. Satisfied, he slid off the barstool and tried to look nonchalant as he strolled to the end of the bar.

"I couldn't help noticing you were alone," he said, trying not to sound nervous. "Would you mind terribly much if I joined you for a drink?'

"Why should I mind?" she said, flashing yet another one of those smiles. "After all, you were the one kind enough to buy it for me."

He moved to sit next to her, then stopped and looked around the bar. He was a thousand miles away from home, his wife, and their friends and associates, but old habits were hard to break.

"Would you mind if we sat somewhere a little more...private?" he said, gesturing to a booth in one of the shadowy corners.

"Whatever you like—?" She paused, waiting for him to supply his name.

"John," he said, his cheeks coloring slightly. "My name is John."

"Of course it is," she replied, no hint of irony in her honeyed voice. "My name is Phaedra."

"That's an unusual name." He said as he slid into the booth beside her.

"It's from the classics. Phaedra was a queen who was possessed by unnatural desires."

"How fascinating," he said, feigning interest. He suspected Phaedra was as much her name as John was his. It sounded too deliberate to be real.

Once they were safely in the booth, he went into the same little song and dance he always did on business trips: he inflated his importance at the firm, while avoiding telling her the exact company he worked for and what it was he really did for a living, and when she asked him where he was from, he gave her the correct state, but lied about the city. And some time during the small talk he let his hand fall on Phaedra's leg just above the knee.

To his relief, she did not demand that he remove his hand. Her dress was silky smooth under his palm, and beneath its flimsiness he could feel warm flesh and taut muscle. It had been years since his wife's thigh had felt like anything besides a bag of suet.

He had to fight to keep from choking on his drink when she shifted her leg so that his hand slid further up her thigh, towards the heat between her legs. His suspicions were confirmed: she wasn't wearing panties. He began to sweat, his scalp itching under his thinning hair. His crotch throbbed like a high school freshman's with a case of blue balls.

"I, uh, have a room here at the hotel..." he stammered clumsily.

She shook her head and wrinkled her nose in disgust. "I
detest
hotel rooms. They're so impersonal. Why don't we go to my place, instead?"

"Sure. Whatever you want, baby. '

As he heard himself saying those words, he wondered what the hell he thought he was doing. He had to catch a flight first thing in the morning, not to mention turn the rental car

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) back in at the airport. He didn't have the time to waste going to some hottie's apartment out in the 'burbs. But when he looked into Phaedra's eyes, he knew he would do whatever it took to get her into bed, even if it meant flying standby.

As he signed for the drinks, she slid out of the booth and motioned for him to follow.

"Let's go in my car," she said, holding up a key ring attached to a pair of red plastic dice.

He knew he should protest. The last thing he needed was to get stranded out in the middle of nowhere, unable to get back to the hotel in time to pick up his bags and make his flight home. There was something about the arrangement that set off an alarm in the back of his head, but it was quickly muffled by the lust rising from below decks.

Phaedra led him out the side door of the hotel bar to the parking lot outside. She walked ahead of him with quick, purposeful strides, which made her jiggle in all the right places.

"Here's my car," she said, gesturing to a little convertible, painted the same color red as her lips and nails. "Hop in, John."

He opened the passenger door halfway then paused, indecision flickering across his brow.

"I don't know.. .maybe I should follow you.

"You can do that, if you like," she said, with a shrug. "I live out on the lake; it's not that far, but it's easy to get lost if you don't know where you're going."

He suddenly had a vivid mental picture of himself driving around unfamiliar suburbs in the dark, a raging hard on in his pants, and with no clear idea of how to get back to the hotel.

"Okay," he said with a resigned sigh. "I'll ride with you."

He wasn't sure if Phaedra was driving particularly fast, or if merely riding in an open convertible in the dead of night made it seem that way. The wind tore at him, turning his tie into a windsock and exposing his comb-over for the lie it was.

As they sped through the night, she rubbed his thigh gently, moving her hand closer and closer to his groin. He licked his lips and coughed nervously into his fist. The lights of the strip malls and main boulevard had long since disappeared, plunging them into an inky darkness that was relieved only by the glow from the dashboard and the beams of the headlights on the road ahead.

"Where is it you said you live?" he shouted over the roar of the wind and the engine.

"Red Velvet Manor!" she shouted back.

"Is that some kind of subdivision?"

"Lord, no!" she laughed. "That's what it was called a hundred years ago! It's something of an unofficial landmark around here. It used to be a brothel for the super-rich. All the rooms had red velvet wallpaper—that's where it got its name. Now it's a private residence.

I live there."

"All by yourself?"

"No."

Before he could ask another question, the car rounded a turn in the road and he saw their final destination. It was an impressive late Victorian pile, with turrets and huge picture windows that glowed like the eyes of a jack o'lantern, situated on a cliff-like outcropping

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) that overlooked the lake. Judging from the utter darkness surrounding the estate, the nearest neighbors had to be a mile away in every direction.

Phaedra steered the car up the lengthy drive that lead to the old-fashioned covered carriage port at the side of the house, the gravel crunching loudly under the wheels.

"Wow, this place really is something," he said, leaning back in his seat to ogle the building.

"How much does a house like this go for, nowadays?"

Phaedra shrugged indifferently. It was clear that the subject did not interest her in the slightest. "A million, maybe two, if you count the lakefront that's attached to it. The Contessa says it's been in the family for generations, and that's probably where it's going to stay."

She switched the car off and turned to face him. She moved quickly, leaning in to plant a deep, passionate kiss on his mouth. His thoughts of money and real estate disappeared entirely, turned to steam by the heat growing within his belly. He took her in his arms, holding her body tight against his own. In twelve years of marriage, he had never experienced anything as sensuous as Phaedra's lips moving against his own.

Phaedra broke away from the kiss, studying him with hooded eyes, a sly smile on her lips.

"You're shivering," she said. "How sweet."

"I don't know what to say. This is all so new to me," he lied.

"I think we better go inside before you cum outside," she said with a wink.

"Uh, yeah," he grunted.

The interior of the house was as impressive as its exterior. The first thing he saw was a grand foyer with elaborate parquet flooring and a grand staircase that split on the second floor into two separate wings. An antique chandelier swayed in the air above their heads like a giant gold and crystal windchime. The walls of the reception hall were paneled in the finest cherry wood, burnished to a healthy glow. Marble hamadryads sported with marble fauns while a massive grandfather's clock with a zodiac face counted out the time nearby.

Twin mirrors in gilt rococo frames, each the size of a door, made the foyer seem even larger than it already was.

"Man, this must have really been something, back in the day," John marveled aloud, his voice echoing in the hall.

"You have no idea how grand it was, young man. No idea at all."

There was a buzzing sound and an electric wheelchair emerged from the parlor off the foyer. The rider was an old woman dressed in a velvet housecoat the color of oxblood, a woolen throw draped across her lap for extra warmth. Her face was as wrinkled as that of an apple-doll, her swan-white hair bound in a long braid and coiled about her fragile shoulders like an albino python. The old woman's hands were as gnarled and twisted as the claws of a vulture, the nails long and yellowish.

None of this was unusual, given her obvious great age. However, what he was unprepared for was the sight of metal legs that resembled a cross between stilts and pogo sticks emerging from underneath the fringe of the blanket covering the old lady's lap. Upon noticing his stare, the Contessa hastily rearranged the throw, screening the pros-theses from view.

"Contessa! What are you doing up at this hour?" Phaedra said mock-reproachfully, bending to kiss her benefactors withered cheek.

"It's these bones of mine. The older they get, the harder it is to sleep the night through. I

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) did not mean to startle your gentleman friend, my dear."

"Allow me to introduce you: Contessa, this is...John."

The Contessa offered her gnarled hand to him. There was a ring with a diamond the size of a man's thumb glinting on one arthritic finger.

"
Enchanted,
my dear," she said, smiling crookedly.

"My pleasure, ma'am."

"I have no doubt it will be," the old woman said, a sly grin on her face.

"Uh. Right." He smiled awkwardly and pulled away, unsure of how to react.

"Can I get you anything, Contessa?" Phaedra asked, apparently unfazed by the old woman's behavior towards her guest.

"No, my dear. Do not mind me," she said, toggling the joystick so that the chair went back the way it came. "You two have fun," she said over her shoulder. "That is what youth is for, after all!" Something about what she had just said must have struck the old woman as funny, because she began to laugh. It was a wild sound, like the call of a screech owl.

Phaedra took his hand and led him towards the stairs. He paused to look back towards the parlor, where the Contessa sat chuckling to herself.

"She doesn't mind you bringing men home?"

"Mind? Why should she mind?" Phaedra snorted. "Remember what I told you about Red Velvet Manor? She used to run the joint." A leer spread across his face. "You mean she was a----?"

"Yes. But not since they closed the place back in '44. She married an expatriate Romanian nobleman who didn't have anything but a title. But that's okay, because that's all she wanted from him."

"What happened to her, uh, you know...?"

"Her legs were amputated a few years ago, due to complications from diabetes. That's when I began working for her."

"You're her nurse?"

"She prefers the title 'companion'. So do I. I've accompanied her on numerous trips around the world. It's only recently that her condition forced her to return here."

"Real jet-setter, eh?"

"She knew them all: Rita and Ali, Liz and Dick, Rainier and Grace, Coward, Capote, Warhol..." She turned suddenly to fix him with her gaze. "But that's enough about the Contessa. We've got
better
things to do. Don't you agree?"

He tried to answer, but something in the way she looked at him made it hard for him to formulate a coherent sentence, so he contented himself with nodding his head. As she resumed her climb, he lagged behind a few steps, watching her perfectly formed ass. This was all too good to be true. She had to be a pro. He'd been around enough to know the difference between a call girl and a bored housewife on the prowl. Her mentioning the old lady's former profession had to be a tip-off. No doubt once the credit card clicker finally made its appearance, she'd be charging for her services, but something told him it would be well worth the expense. He'd had his share of paid women before, but none of them had this amount of style or heat.