William Lashner - Marked Man

“I don’t think it’sgoing to happen,” I said to Rhonda Harris over drinks at a swank pickup joint on South Street.

“That’s too bad,” she said with a rather saucy smile. “It would have been sensational.”

“Oh, I bet it would.”

We were sitting across from each other in a small booth upstairs at the Monaco Living Room, among swarms of the young and the beautiful looking for the quick and the nasty. It was a dark, intimate space with small tables, a mirrored dance floor, and a balcony set back from the main room for those private moments. Not my normal type of beer joint, but she had picked it, and I must say I liked the way the flame of the candle flickered in her green eyes.

“What’s the problem?” she said. “Is there anything I can do to make it happen?”

“Not really. We just don’t think it’s quite the right time for Charlie to talk.”

“Who doesn’t think that? Charlie?”

“I haven’t been in direct contact with my client lately.”

“So it’s someone else calling the shots.”

“In a way, yes. You want another round?”

She was drinking Cosmopolitans, which was very cosmopolitan of her. I was drinking my usual Sea Breeze, which was not. I spun my finger at the beautiful black-clad waitress, asking for another round. Truth was, if I wasn’t falling in love with Rhonda Harris, I would have been falling in love with the waitress.

“Doesn’t Charlie himself have a say?” she said. “Some people are thrilled to see their names in the newspaper.”

“Really?” I said. “I hadn’t heard that.”

“I could get your picture in the article along with his.”

“My good side?”

“Is there a bad one?”

“Now I know you’ll say anything to get the interview.”

“Busted. Are you going to give Charlie a chance to make up his own mind?”

“When the time’s right, maybe.” I lifted up my drink and snatched what was left of it just as the waitress came with our next round. They were quick with the drinks at the Monaco Living Room. I smiled like a buffoon at the waitress. She ignored me.

“Do you like being a lawyer, Victor?” said Rhonda as she swirled her rose-colored drink.

“Lawyers rank in job dissatisfaction second only to proctologists.”

“Well, then,” she said. “I guess things could always be worse.”

“But the rubber gloves are so cool, don’t you think? That’s why everyone uses them now. Lunch ladies, cops. Remember the good old days when dentists stuck their hands in your mouth after just a quick wash?”

“Do we have to talk about dentists?”

“So let’s talk about another despised profession, newspaper reporters.”

“Are we despised?”

“Oh, yes. More than lawyers, even.”

“I doubt that.”

“The things I’ve heard. Do you like writing?”

“Not writing, really. That’s the chore at the end of the chase. But I’m a very goal-oriented person and my job fits right in with that. When I need to find a story or get an interview, I usually find a way. Sometimes I ambush the target, sometimes I use my charm.”

“Like now.”

“I’m trying, although it doesn’t seem to be swaying you much.”

“Try harder.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She dropped her hand casually on my forearm, looked at me straight with her captivating eyes. “But either way, Victor, know that I will get it done. I’ll find Charlie, with or without you, because it is what I do.”

“Take it easy, Rhonda. It’s just a story.”

“It’s more than that, Victor. People aren’t adjectives. You can think of yourself as kind and sweet and funny, but how you think of yourself doesn’t mean a thing. People are verbs.”

“What verb are you?”

“I eliminate. Distractions, obstacles, impediments to my success. I’m someone who gets what she’s after, no matter who or what gets in the way.”

“My God, you sound ruthless.”

“Does it excite you, Victor?”

“Oddly, yes. You seem so sure of things. No doubts?”

“What’s the point of doubt? You make a decision, go down a certain road, and there you are. You can whine and dither, or you can keep going and get it done. I’m not sure how I ended up here, but I’m not backtracking. Pick a path, do your job with neither fear nor hesitation, that’s the only way I know.”

“So if you never let anything get in your way, how come you’re still just a stringer?”

“I started late, switched careers in midstream.”

“What did you do before?”

“Animal control.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. Dogs and cats. Ferrets and snakes and squirrels. Lots of squirrels. You’d be surprised how dangerous they can be.”

“Squirrels?”

“After alcohol and lawyers, they’re the number one health threat in America.”

“Really?”

“No, but don’t ever mess with an angry squirrel.”

“I bet you looked hot in your uniform.”

“I still have it.”

“Yowza.”

“So what verb are you, Victor?”

“I question, I suppose. I trust uncertainty. I’ve found out that whenever I’m sure of something, I’m dead wrong.”

“What are you sure about right now?”

“That you talk tougher than you really are.”

She pursed her lips, sipped her drink. “Maybe you’re right.”

“You’re not so tough?”

“No, that’s not it,” she said, leaning close enough so I could smell the triple sec on her breath. “You’re right about being dead wrong.”

Later that night shelay naked beneath me, facedown on the bed. I was naked atop her, my thumbs gently kneading the taut muscles of her back and neck. She was purring like a lioness stretched out in the noonday sun, I was vibrating like a hyena over a freshly felled giraffe. But it was not mere animal lust that was driving me, though I freely admit to lusting like an animal. No, I was filled with some sharp emotion as I stroked and massaged.

I leaned down, kissed the knife’s edge of her clavicle. She reached up with her hand to rub the nape of my neck. I nuzzled her earlobe and with my tongue flicked lightly the flesh beneath it.

I have heard tell that the capacity to love is a sign of mental health, which meant, I suppose, that I was just then the healthiest man in the city, mentally wise at least, seeing as I was falling in love with every woman I laid my gaze upon. I pined for them, I felt lost without them, I was sure that each of them, the woman beneath me being no exception, could save my life.

I kissed her again. Her bracelets jangled lightly as she rubbed my neck harder than before. I wasn’t even sure who she was, really, in her soul, but the raw emotion she coaxed out of me with every purr and every touch cut like a jagged shiv through my heart.

But even in my besotted state, I knew I couldn’t be feeling true love so indiscriminately. No, what was flooding my blood that night, along with the lust, was a potent cocktail of fear and desperation, of loneliness and need, of a pathetic yearning for the merest breath of salvation. What I was searching for, in my deepest soul, was someone to pull me out of a bottomless hole whose dimensions I couldn’t fathom.

I nibbled her flesh. Her fingernails dug into my scalp with a lovely pain.

Yet even as I recognized the fallacy of my emotions, I couldn’t give up the hope that maybe, just maybe, this woman, this one, here, now, not womanhood in general but this specific woman in particular, could actually be my savior. The others might have been counterfeit totems to a false hope, but maybe this one, here, was actually the true answer to my questing heart.