Mark Fishman - No. 22 Pleasure City

Areliable witness said that he saw her from an upper-story window and described her as a young woman, maybe thirty, wearing a pair of jeans cut low at the hips and a white short-sleeved shirt that showed her muscular upper arms when the billowing, knee-length beige trench coat blew open and off her shoulders because she was walking so fast. Her navel was pierced by something with a diamond in it and the diamond had winked at him with a reflected ray of sunlight.

She was above-average height and wore low-heeled shoes that clattered as she walked along the sidewalk beneath the overhanging branches of trees, and what had drawn him to the window in the first place was the mouth-watering racket of her footsteps echoing in the street. He went directly to the window whenever he heard a woman’s footsteps because he liked to watch them as they walked. He said that this woman’s walk was something special. She was slender and her hips swayed noticeably but unselfconsciously, with confidence and purpose. In his opinion, she was going somewhere in a hurry.

Nothing much moved along the streets of the Midwestern city in the region of the Great Lakes early in the morning, and anything that did move, whether human or machine, went about it at a crawl. Everyone and everything but Angela Mason. She walked determinedly along the sidewalk on Prospect Avenue toward the intersection without seeing more than a few passing cars, a couple of city buses and taxis, and one or two bicycles. She waited impatiently at the signal until the small figure changed its position and its color from red to green like someone walking and going nowhere. She smiled, then crossed the intersection, hesitating for a second in the middle to look to the left and right.

She went on her way with long strides, her shoes clattering on the sidewalk. A gulp came to her throat. She wanted to slip unobtrusively into a crowd but there was no sign of one. A handsome man came toward her, and as he came closer she saw that he was wincing. An unlit cigarette hung down from his lips, and it jerked up with each grimace. He lit it, and the lighted match stayed lit. She sized him up. He tried to smile for her, but only one side of his mouth could manage it. He dropped the match and walked past her.

There were a few other passersby, but they didn’t look at her for more than the time it took to make sure they didn’t collide with someone else. Angela felt that someone was following her, or that someone coming her way or fading out behind her back was watching her. She looked around several times before arriving at the next intersection. She checked the time on her wristwatch. She turned right at Edgewater, walked a block, turned right on Wilson Drive and nearly ran into a woman riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. The bicycle swerved at the last second and she jumped to the edge of the sidewalk to the grass and came to a halt just in front of a wooden bench painted green.

She was trembling. She clenched her fists so tightly that her knuckles were pale. She licked her lips, telling herself her tongue felt like a dried-out sponge. She swallowed, then rubbed the salivary glands under her chin to make them work. Now she moistened her lips with her tongue. She sat down on the bench, facing the flow of traffic and the lake.

She raised her hand and mechanically began to stroke her hair. She gave the street a steady look. A car pulled off Wilson Drive halfway onto the curb. Her eyes opened wide. Then she felt a hand press firmly down on her shoulder. She didn’t jump. She turned her head slowly, craning her neck. A face she didn’t know looked mildly down at her. The eyes in it shone with a peculiar light that didn’t come from sunlight. A hand squeezed her upper arm. She felt something like a pinprick at the base of her neck. She looked straight ahead and smiled sweetly, her eyelashes fluttered, and she got up from the bench. She didn’t need any help, but she let herself be guided toward a waiting car. The rear door opened. A hand gave her a gentle push from behind, she ducked her head, and another hand came to rest on top of her head to protect it from striking the roof. She slid across the seat. The man got in beside her and shut the door. The car pulled leisurely away from the curb.

At first her face was stiff like a mask. Then she felt a warm, enveloping glow that spread from her neck downward and played between her legs. The tension in her body was completely gone. She relaxed, letting her mind become pleasantly blank. She turned her head, following traffic that seemed to move in slow motion past the window, each car, bus and taxi making its way in the steady flow on the street.

The landscape changed slowly in front of her bleary eyes. Thinking was difficult, her ability to concentrate was so light, and it didn’t matter that she could not get her floating thoughts down properly. They were up there somewhere like helium balloons. She tugged gently on the strings to bring them down. They didn’t respond. Only the slight quivering of her fingers revealed that there was still some energy left in her.

Burt Pohl didn’t wait for the elevator. He climbed the stairs in a rush, two at a time, without losing his balance, until he got to the fifth floor. He fumbled with the statue in the niche, found the latchkey she kept under it. His fingers held the key nervously. He stood in front of Angela’s door knowing what he was doing there and knowing that he shouldn’t be doing what he was going to do because it wasn’t like him to barge in on her except that now he had no choice and was compelled by an urgency set in motion by fear. But what that fear was all about he didn’t know. Bad luck stood right next to him.

The key fit the lock and he turned the doorknob and eased the door open. He smelled something sickly sweet and thick in the air the minute he let himself in and shut the door behind him.

He flattened himself against the wall, the key held loosely in his hand. It was dark where he stood, listening. At first the silence was so deep that it hummed in his ears. A light shone from the adjacent room. He took a long breath and stepped away from the wall. He crouched tensely, alert for the slightest sound. Then a low voice in the next room rasped out what sounded like an order. He stood up and groped along the wall for a light switch. A fan of deep-blue rays of light streamed out of the next room. He didn’t find a light switch.

Pohl took a step forward. The deep-blue light changed to a warm, yellow light. He heard heavy breathing. A man’s low voice went on giving orders that sounded more like instructions, not an aggressive voice, but authoritative. Pohl went dead-slow to the half-open door of the adjacent room, pushed it noiselessly aside, and peered in. It was Angela’s living room, he’d been here a dozen times, but it didn’t look at all like the same room.

Angela crouched in a corner with her back against the wall. She wore a black sleeveless T-shirt and panties. Her skin glistened with sweat in the buff light. Pohl had never seen her like this. Her mouth was forced open and her lips drawn back by a medium-sized ball held in place by a strap that went around her head, pinning her hair against her ears. Her arms were bent awkwardly behind her. He couldn’t see if they were tied up.

She tilted her head backward, touching the wall. Her eyes reflected the yellowish light. In this position, her knees pointed straight out in front of her. Pohl’s gaze went from her knees to her inner thighs. Her panties were pulled aside by something sticking out of her pussy. He could hear a low, humming sound that came from the thing inside her. It was kept there by her evenly-distributed weight and the object’s contact with the floor. He squinted. Angela moved mechanically a few inches up and down on it. Her feet were splayed. She rode the vibrator with her eyes partly shut. A moan came from her throat.