Peter Maravelis - San Francisco Noir

My eyes enjoyed their tour of the Snow Leopard. The race-car curve of her neck. The flesh bulging out of her bra under the tight black shirt under the black leather jacket.

The cocoa-butter brown of all that smooth silk skin. The smile that was so tiny I couldn’t even tell if it was really a smile.

I was falling under the Snow Leopard’s spell, I could feel her Black Magic working on me, and I couldn’t stop seeing her straddling me, those thick red lips contorted with mad passion as she ravaged me like a crazy jungle cat.

Being a sex maniac has a way of clouding a man’s judgment. The doctor said I was a problematic hypersexualist . I said, “Doc, that takes all the romance out of it. Can’t I just be a sex maniac?” He told me I needed to see him three times a week. I never went back.

People have many misconceptions about what it’s really like to be a sex maniac. They think just because you’ll rut with any old skunkhumper when the hunger’s upon you, that you don’t crave the crème de la crème. I was the junky who was after the finest China-white high. Only, of course, I was a junky of love. And at 11 o’clock on Monday night, the Snow Leopard looked like the greatest score in a lifetime of scores.

Keep your mind on the job, my mind reminded me. I was a distribution specialist in the illegal goods and services industry. A master courier. A bagman. Not to be confused with a bag lady, who keeps all her possessions in a shopping cart and screams about how the aliens won’t stop probing her. There are, in fact, female bagmen. Being a postmodern sexualist myself, I don’t have a problem with the gender blurring. I was basically a high-end black-market messenger boy. I picked shit up. I dropped shit off.

People often assume that just because you’re a sex maniac, you can’t have a life. Wrong again. As with anything, there are all levels of function among sex addicts. I was never one of those grab-a-kid-from-the-schoolyard-and-keep-her-in-my-basement sex maniacs. I was a very high-functioning sex maniac. An ethical sex maniac. I was all about consent. I had rules. I didn’t mix business with pleasure. I took pride in my work. Being the best distribution specialist I could be. That’s just how Mother raised me. So when I was on the job, I showed up on time, I got my package, and I was on my merry way.

That night was supposed to be no different. Show up, get package, deliver. My boss, Chinese Willy, had made a big point of saying that he was giving this job special attention, like: If you don’t mook this job up, you just might get invited into the club to play some of our little reindeer games . All I had to do was get the package back to Willie’s by midnight. Cake.

That was before the Snow Leopard. When Shiva Shiv said the name, I laughed out loud. I stopped laughing when Shiva Shiv said, “What the fuck you laughin’ at?” in a voice dripping of curry and murder. The name rattled around in my brain the whole day. Naturally, that night the Snow Leopard invaded my dreams. She was half-cat, half-woman. I could smell the fertile sex as she kept changing back and forth, from cat to woman and back: whiskers and lips, fangs and fur, that rough tongue, claws and paws, breasts and wet flesh, all hungry jungle feline in-heat heat. She was tearing me to shreds, guts ripped open, and blood, my God, she was pounding me, eating my flesh and taking me right to the corner of Ecstasy and Death. I woke up in a cold sweat with a curtain rod for a johnson. I should have known right then and there. Dreams never lie.

So there I was, staring at the Snow Leopard, with her incredible flesh and her sex-red lips, and I could smell that smell from my dream. That in-heat smell. Or was that just in my head? Being a sex maniac has a way of blurring the fine line between reality and what you’d like reality to be.

Shut up! I scolded myself. Get your package, take care of your business, and be on yer merry way. I fondled the fifty Large screaming in my secret jacket pocket. Why doesn’t she say something? my mind asked me. She got up and paced like, well, like a big dangerous hungry cat. And I could hear the beat of the jungle drum. Or maybe it was just Busta Rhymes booming from the next room. Money, danger, and the distinct whiff of Snow Leopard shivered me from eyeballs to nut-balls to foot-balls: Adrenaline pumping furiously, I was jacked to the max and stone-cold sober.

I loved my job. I used to try to explain to people who’d never been in the illegal goods and services industry why it’s such a fun and rewarding line of work. Often when I was on the job I got what I can only describe as an evangelical feeling. Like this is what God wanted me to do. And on that Monday night, I felt like He, or She (I’m not gender-restrictive when it comes to my deities), had brought me to the Snow Leopard to change my life. I can’t explain it, really, except to say I was sitting there thinking that this job felt like one of those jobs where you look back from the future and you say, Wow, that was the greatest job in the history of jobs! But then I started thinking, No, maybe this is one of those jobs you look back on and say, I let myself drift, and that’s how I got this scar.

The more we didn’t talk, the more electromagnetic the air got, like two saturated clouds bumping and rubbing, the rumbling building as the lightning gathers. I wanted to get a good look at her, fix the constellation of her features in my head so at least I could have her star in my fantasies later. I reached for the light. This is what prompted the first word she ever spoke to me. Naturally, inevitably that word was:

“No.”

Spoken in the chilled voice of a seasoned predator.

It hung there in the air:

“No.”

I did not turn the light on. So we stood there in the dark.

“Are you in, or out?” she purred.

This was not in the script. When Chinese Willy is expecting delivery of his package at midnight, and it’s 11:13 p.m. and fifty Gs are flaming in your secret jacket pocket, you need to keep your priorities straight. My dance card was full. Or was this the call of the wild? That’s the problem with being a sex maniac. You can never really be sure.

“I like to know what I’m getting into before I get into something-”

“Look,” she shot back, those coal eyes glowing, “any minute now two big guys with automatic weapons are gonna bust through that door, and if you’re not in, you should get out.”

“I like to know what the stakes are before I go all in,” I said.

“You play your cards right, I’ll make sure lady luck blows on your dice.” She licked her whiskers.

“What’s the game?” I asked.

“Look, all I need is an ace in the hole,” she hissed, “and if you’re it, I guarantee the pot’ll be very sweet. But tic-toc, we’re on the clock.”

“How do I know you’re not bluffing?” I asked, ready to crawl through broken glass for her, but trying not to show it. “Trying to set me up for a big fall?”

“Tic-toc, tic-toc.” She blazed those cat eyes at me.

I folded with a sigh: “I’m all in.”

“I just hope you got enough hand-”

Before she could even get through the sentence, two very big guys with very automatic weapons busted through the door. She dropped straight down, behind the bed frame, while pulling out a petite little pistol. I unholstered and duck-n-rolled under the bed, firing as fast as my fingers’ll fly, taking down the very big guy on the left. First shot: right shoulder. Second shot: belly-blast. Third shot: left kneecap. As he fell he fired his Glock, bullets spraying around the room like his gun was prematurely ejaculating. When he hit the floor, eye level with me, I got off the shot I’m truly proud of, as I plugged a slug right over the mug’s noseholes. That’s when the big guy’s lights went out.