William Lashner - Past Due

I led her up the stairs, led her into my apartment, kissed her hard and long, led her to the couch. That led, of course, to the aforementioned tender kisses, the aforementioned soft caresses. I moved my hand through her long black hair like I would move it through a basin of water and then I brought the hair to my face and smelled its freshness, its organic herbalness. I closed my eyes and I saw her body, her younger body, naked, taut and lithe, I saw it as clearly as if the photographs were pinned beneath my eyes. And then I couldn’t help myself even if I had wanted to. If you leave a greyhound on a metal run it will head off into a sprint with such abandon it will literally break its neck. The aforementioned frantic unbuttoning, unbelting, the aforementioned long, languorous licks of the neck and collarbone as I undraped the frilly white shirt from her shoulders. I bowed down to kiss the tops of her breasts, the same breasts from the pictures of which I had been staring at relentlessly ever since they came into my possession. I fumbled at the clasp behind her back, as I always fumbled at the clasp behind the back, and then the bra suddenly loosened and she herself raised her hands and pulled it over her shoulders and her breasts, her breasts came free.

And they were beautiful, gorgeous, ripe, perfect. And not the same. No, not the same. The nipples were smaller than those in the pictures, the areolae lighter. And yes, unblemished. Unblemished. Not the same at all. And something went out of me then, and everything sagged, my emotions, my hurry, my obsession, my lust. Everything sagged, yes everything did. And that had been the end of that. No lead in the pencil, no toothpaste in the tube. Time to hire the limo.

There was a second knock at the door. I searched quickly for someplace to hide the bra, jammed it under one of the cushions of the couch, and then let Kimberly Blue inside my apartment.

She sat down on the couch, right upon the cushion beneath which I had stashed the bra. She seemed troubled, did Kimberly, quiet, without her normal brassy confidence. I sat down across from her and tilted my head to get a good look at her.

“Nice place,” she said, as she perused my digs with cautious eyes.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Well, it could be a dec setup if you would, like, decorate or, even better, clean.”

“But that would be so out of character.”

“Two words, V. Merry Maids. They come in, do a quality job, when you come home the place is good to go.”

“How do you know so much about Merry Maids?”

“That was one of the primary employment opportunities I was looking at for after college.”

“At the vice presidential level?”

“More like entry level.”

“And then Eddie Dean came along.”

“Yes,” she said. “I don’t know if you noticed, but we’ve been away.”

“You and Eddie?”

“And Colfax, too. San Fran. The city of lights.”

“I thought that was Paris.”

“I don’t know, San Fran was pretty bright. Mr. Dean had business out there he had to handle.”

“And he took you along?”

“I think he likes having me around.” She looked around nervously, bit into one of her cuticles. “Anything new on Tommy Greeley?”

“Just that he was sleeping with the wife of one of the guys he was selling drugs with.”

“Who?”

“A guy named Lonnie Chambers.”

“Did this Lonnie know Tommy was hooking up with his wife?”

“Yes.”

“You think he was the one who set Tommy Greeley up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Pretty good reason, don’t you think?”

“Maybe. You know I am always glad to see you, Kimberly-”

“Really?”

“Sure. But I’m a little tired right now. Why don’t we meet up tomorrow afternoon at my office and we can go over everything then.”

“I know where your office is, V. I could have gone there if I wanted to. I wanted to talk to you someplace not at the office.”

“Oh?”

“Someplace private.”

“Oh.”

“I overheard something.”

“Oh. I see.” And I did. Kimberly was troubled, and there was something else I noticed now in her eyes that I hadn’t noticed before. She was scared. I stood, went to the fridge, pulled out a Rolling Rock long neck, popped the top with an opener.

“How are you doing, Kimberly?” I said as I handed her the bottle.

“I’m not sleeping with him,” said Kimberly.

“I believe you.”

“He’s yucky, you know what I mean? That face.”

“I was wrong to even bring that up. I was a jerk to think it. And even so, it’s none of my business. Whatever you do is none of my business, and I was wrong to imply what I was implying. But you should be careful around him, and especially around that creep Colfax.”

“Oh, Colfax is all right. He’s a sweetie.”

“No he’s not. Deep down I’m a sweetie, you just haven’t seen it yet. But Colfax, deep down, is Jack the Ripper.”

“What’s really going on here, V? Do you have any idea?”

“Some, but not much. Why don’t you tell me what you heard.”

“It’s nothing, really. Mr. Dean had a meeting with a couple of men and it got a little heated. I was in the other room so I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like one of the other men was pressuring Mr. Dean for some money and he was telling them to calm down, that he was on it, and that he’d have what he owed in a short time.”

“So our Eddie Dean is not as rich as he lets on.”

“He sounded scared, V. You know how he always has this droll, laconic thing going on? Well, here he sounded scared. And there was something else. He said he had a big deal going down in Philly and it was only a matter of time before he had the money. But V, all he does here is sit in the house building some wooden model of that ship of his, the one rusting down in the harbor? There is no big deal going down. The only place I can figure where he might be trying to get some money is from Derek Manley, but it sounded like he needed a brutal piece of change. Does Derek Manley have anything like that?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought. Poodles. I’m going to lose my job, aren’t I?”

“Is that all you’re worried about, Kimberly? Your job?”

“Ayeah. Helloo. Remember Merry Maids? What do you think that would do to my nails? But that’s not all. Am I, like, in trouble? Should I be scared?”

“Why ask me?”

“Because you know more than you let on. See, V, I know how much I don’t know, I know how much I don’t do. I’m the vice president of what? Of getting coffee and keeping the help in line? The job’s a joke. But it pays. And I hope maybe it will lead to something better. I have skills, I could be good at something. Something. But this is where I’m at now and I am asking you, should I be scared? Am I going to get in trouble? Should I stick it out and see where it goes or should I maybe hop a plane to Cancun.”

“Tell me about how you got this job?” I said.

“The position was just posted on the job board, like hundreds of others.”

“So why’d you apply to this one?”

“Well, it was, like, made for me, you know? They wanted a marketing major, which I was. They wanted someone who could speak Spanish, which I can.”

“Really?”

“My dad was at the store all day, but he paid this nice old Mexican woman to look after me. I sort of picked it up.”

“Does Spanish come in handy working for Jacopo?”

“Not yet.”

“What else?”

“They wanted someone with experience designing ad campaigns for clothing lines.”

“Let me guess. You happened to have had some experience in that very same field.”

“My senior marketing project.”

“But Jacopo doesn’t sell clothes.”