Take her she’s yours

( I was going to use this as a chapter on Hudson City novel, but decided to keep it as a stand alone story)

  

The minute I walked into the pub in the old part of Hometown, I knew it is a mistake.

I was searching for the kind of bar that I knew growing up but found myself in the last bastion of old mobsters, as if straight out of set of the Sopranos, down to the stylized haircuts, pin stripe suits, pointed black shoes, and expressions that said not only had they noticed me, but were already fitting me for cement shoes so they might dump me in the river near the docks.

I found a stool in a dark corner at the other end of the bar, ordered a shot of whiskey and a beer, and sat back to take on the floor show just getting ready to star, a local singer who had become a regular in this place, making something of a stir among the locals who claimed she might be the next big thing, a kind of female Frank Sinatra.

When she came out onto the small stage in the corner, I was stunned.

Locals had talked about her voice (she sings like an angel, one old timer claims, or the devil), but had neglected to prepare me for how stunning she looked.

Maybe five foot seven or there abouts, with dark – reddish brown hair, already intense eyes made that much more intense by her use of makeup and a slightly wide, slanted mouth. She wore a skin-tight black strapless gown, and a single stand pearl necklace and silver rings on the fingers of both hands as she gripped the microphone and began to sing.

Not like an angel at all, but like a demon in disguise, her voice filling the room and casting a spell on everyone in the bar, including me.

“Don’t get any ideas about her,” the bartender said as he gave me a refill for my whiskey. “She’s the boss’ girl.”

“The boss?” I asked, gulping down half my second drink.

The bartender nodded towards a table in the corner near the stage, and at a dark figure made visible only by the cast off light where she sang.

He was even more mobster than the rest of the mobsters, heavy set, his suit darker than the others, more expensive, too, his shoes straight out of the 1920s, as was the wide brim gray hat he wore. He had a think salt and pepper moustache that matches the crop of hair I saw poking out of the back and sides of his hat. A large, lighted cigar smoldered at the corner of his mouth, a small illegal act in these days of political correctness nobody in this room or beyond it would dare criticize him about.

His stare was like looking into the ends of a double barrel shotgun, as if promising instant death wherever his gaze went.

Although he seemed less deadly when looking at her, perhaps even a bit amused. But unlike the rest of us, he didn’t seem transfixed, perhaps seemed a little bored.

She sang in his direction as if he was the only member of the audience that mattered, seductive, potent, and yet also remote. Her use for the boss seemed focused only on the gifts of comfort he could give, among other things, was the jewelry, and a performance space. She clearly had her gaze firmly fixed on some future beyond old mafia bars like this.

 Eventually, either by permission or boredom, her gaze shifted away from the boss, taking a survey of a landscape of faces she probably knew well, the half-made men, the wannabes, the other less vermin the boss tolerates either out of amusement or because they do small chores from time to time.

Then, her gaze fell on me.

Her remote expression altered and her gaze – focusing on me – took on a puzzled look, and this shifted to an annoyed look, as she continued to survey the rest the room.

The look did not go unnoticed. The boss stared at me across the room.

“Now you’ve done it,” the bartender whispered. “You’d best get out of here while you still can.”

“Leave? I’m not going to leave because someone doesn’t like her looking at me.”

The bartender shrugged.

“It’s your funeral,” he said went down to the far end of the bar to fill someone’s drink.

Of course, there was another reason to stay: her.

Boss’ girl or not, she was someone worth looking at and listening to, even if she seemed arrogant, and I intended to bask in it for the length of my second drink at least.

When the bartender gets back to my end of the bar, I motioned him over.

“Buy her a drink,” I said.

The bartender’s eyes grew very wide.

“You ARE crazy.”

“Just do it, okay.”

He mumbled more about funerals and idiots, but he complied, carrying the drink over to the stage himself, then pointing at me when she asked who bought it for her.

She actually smiled at me, warm enough to set off my vivid imagination, of what it might be like to help her peal that black dress off her, and to speculate on what she might feel like pressed against me, what he lips might taste like if she granted me a kiss, although I know I would want far more than that, and felt myself getting hard as I imaging laying her down and easing myself into her.

The intensity of my desire for her startled me.

I hadn’t felt this strongly about anybody in years, and in the back of my crazy brain, I pondered how it might be possible to lure her to one of those less than stellar motels along Route 1 & 9 for some frisky activity.

I was so caught up in this fantasy, I didn’t notice the boss’ thugs until one poked my shoulder.

“The boss wants to talk to you,” one of them said, pointing at the man at the table who glared at me.

“Can I finish my drink first?” I asked, assuming I might not have time after my conversation with the boss, and wondered how hard I would land when they tossed me into the alley out back of the bar.

“Now!” the other thud said, his fingers forming a fist at his side.

“Okay, okay,” I said, getting up, leaving a few bills for the bartender, who might use some of it to get me flowers for my grave.

I walked slowly across the room, the two thuds on either side of me, measuring me for my coffin.

We stopped near the table where the boss sat.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Getting a drink,” I told him.

“Why did you buy a drink for the girl?”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” I said.

“You know who she is?”

“The bartender told me.”

‘And you still did it?” the boss asked, no doubt aware of the thoughts running through my head and glaring at me as if he had caught me in the sack with her.

“It was a gesture of respect for her singing,” I said, which was partly true.

“I think you’d better make your gestures elsewhere,” the boss said. “Otherwise, some of my boys might misunderstand.”

I glanced at his two thugs; Pilate might have not wanted the blood of Christ on his hands, but these two ached for mine.

“We wouldn’t want that,” I agreed – even though at this point, my mild curiosity about “his” girl and turned into something infinitely more painful, almost a teenage ache that made my brain get fussy.

I glanced back at the woman on the stage. She stared elsewhere, clearly aware that she was center to my conversation with the Boss.

Then to my surprise, she spoke to the boss.

“Oh, leave him alone, Henry,” she said. “Must you be so insanely jealous all the time.”

“He bought you a drink,” the mobster said.

“Of course, he did. He likes my singing.”

“He wants more than that.”

“Most men do,” she said. “You can’t go beating up everybody who wants to fuck me. Even you don’t have enough men to do that.”

She stepped down off the stage to stand beside me, and to my shocked (and perhaps panic) she slipped her hand in mine and gave my fingers a squeeze.

A chill rippled through me like an electric shock.

“I’ll walk out with you, if you’re ready to go,” she whispered to me. “His boys won’t mess with you if I’m there.”

I nodded, and walked beside her to where she left her wrap, every set of eyes in that room watching every move we made, and looked towards the boss to see what he would do. I saw him nod at his boys just as the door closed behind us.

“Where are you parked?” she asked when we got to the street.

“That way,” I said and pointed up the block.

“Let’s get to your car quick” she said, again taking my hand, practically yanking me, clearly in a panic, as she glanced back to see the boss’ boys emerging.

“I thought you said they won’t hurt me,” I said.

“It’s me I’m worried about,” she said, the clatter of her hurried footsteps sounding on the stone walls of the buildings as we passed. “I’ve never done anything like this before with him.”

“Why did you do it then?” I asked.

She glanced at me, her dark eyes showing a number of things all at once, fear, of course, but then something more curious, something even a bit like how I felt being so close to her, feeling her hand in mine. I ached for her, right down to the bones.

“Aren’t you scared of him like everybody else?” I asked.

“Maybe more than other people,” she said still plowing head, still glancing back at the two thuds behind us.

“Then why do you stay with him?”

“Where am I going to go?” she asked. “You saw how he reacted to you. He’s done worse to other men who dare to flirt with me.”

“There must be somebody who can help you against him.”

“The only people who might stand up to him are other mobsters and they would treat me as bad or worse as he treats me.”

“But you came with me,” I said. “You must know I can’t protect you.”

She glanced at me, her eyes taking on a softer look even as her mouth continued to quiver in fear.

“I wish you could,” she said. “You seem like a nice guy.”

We reached my car; she got in.

‘I’m going with you,” she said once settled into the passenger side.

“For what?”

“What do you think,” she said. “Besides, I’ll need somewhere to stay until I find other accommodations. Since you’re a stranger in this neck of the woods, he and his thugs won’t know where I’ve gone.”

“Are you sure you trust me?”

She glanced at me as I pull the car away from the curb, and into traffic, leaving our pursuers standing in the shadows.

“Trust you? Naturally not. All you really want to do if fuck me.”

I must have blushed because she laughed and squeezed my arm.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I would be unnatural if you didn’t want that.”

“But it’s not the only reason I would want to help you,” I said.

“I know that, too,” she said.

My place was a cheesy cold water flat in the Latino part of town, a bed, sink, stove and bathroom, little else.

She didn’t exactly look disappointed when she surveyed my world, perhaps even predicted someone like me would live in some place like it. But she was clearly used to the best of everything, supplied by the boss and most likely many other men prior to him.

“Cozy,” she said with just an edge of mockery in her voice.

“Is your bed safe?”

“What do you mean?”

“No bedbugs or anything?”

“The only bedbug you need to worry about is me,” I said.

She laughed, and then she kissed me.

Nothing in my imagination could have prepared me for the reality of this, how soft her lips felt against mine, how curiously her tongue explored my lips, my tongue my mouth, as my hands pressed against her breasts feeling her nipples harden under the fabric of her dress.

I eased her dress off and laid her down on the bed, my hand slipping up between her legs to find her wet and waiting, her gaze studying me, curious, a bit excites, and almost humored, thinking me a bit naïve like the horny teenager I really was behind my adult mask.

I touched each pedal of that precious wet flower, and then eased my fingers inside of her, she gripping my shoulders hard as my fingers penetrated her.

“Fuck me hard,” she whispered, giving my ear lobe a nip.

I eased down on top of her, my key finding the right keyhole.

We did not start out slowly. She pushed her hips up as I pushed into her, unable to get it all deep enough, yet, as we went on, as I pushed on and she greeted me, she began to moan, forgetting all the antics, now focused on how I felt plunging head first into her abyss.

“Harder,” she demanded, and I complied.

Banging her so hard that the whole bed rattled under us, an earthquake I expected to cause our little world to collapse. I did not stop, needing to feel all over around me, those internal pillows of flesh that closed in on me like vice grips, still somehow allowing me to go in and out, faster, harder, sweat dribbling down my face onto her breasts. I sucked each nipple as my cock plunged, feeling her nipples grow harder, and tasting drips of liquid from each.

“I’m coming,” I said.

“Do it in me,” she said.

“But…”

“Don’t be fucking idiot. Do what I want.”

I did, and then fell to one side, exhausted, and yet I could not stop touching her, my fingers curling around her breasts, feeling her wetness against my palm.

We might have tried to make love again had not the two thugs kicked open my door and grabbed me by the feet, dragging me off the bed – and with a hard thud to the back of my head – onto the floor.

The dragged me up and slammed me against the wall. One of them punched me in the face and I fogged over, not out of it, but less sensitive to the blows that followed, leaving me gasping on the floor as they dragged her out, naked, her dress clutched in their grimy fingers as they disappeared.

I’m not sure which hurt more, the beating or her absence, my not knowing what would happen to her when they got her back to the Boss.

Suddenly, I got angry - that insane, stupid, and reckless rage that always caused me to do foolish things growing up, the child-like part of my brain that painted me as a white knight, when my adult brain knew better and kept telling me I would die if I did what my child-like brain was telling me to do.

Unfortunately, the child won, and I stuffed some toilet paper in one nostril to stem the bleeding, and then charged out to my car for the drive back to the bar.

The bartender’s mouth fell open when he saw me charged in. Even the thugs, who held the naked girl between them, looking dumbfounded. They had beaten me and here I was coming back for more.

But no one looked more shocked than the boss did.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asked.

“I want the girl back,” I said.

“For what? She’s not worth anything, just another whore.”

“She means something to me,” I said.

Then, a humored glint showed in the boss’ eyes.

“You’re a fool, but an admirable one,” he said. “If you want her, take her. There are a lot more like her where she came from.”

“I disagree,” I said. “I don’t think there’s anyone else like her.”

The humored look turned into a blatant laugh.

“Take her,” he said. “But you won’t be able to afford her. She has expensive tastes.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said, and the thugs let loose of her.

We hobbled out of the bar towards my car.

“He’s right, you know,” she said. “You can’t afford me.”

“I’m not trying to,” I said. “But I just bought you some time. You can stay with me until you find somethings better.”

She laughed. “You just want to fuck me some more.”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s exactly what I want.”

 

 

email to Al Sullivan