Unknown - Charity Ball

“Any cock could tell you that one, ma’am.”

“As I presume you should know. However, I take it you’re here primarily to talk about something besides birds.”

“I like talking birds-”

“So let me-”

Constance kissed the cockatiel on its beak and sent it twittering among the overhanging branches.

“Hang on a sec, Griffith. Got to shut the waterworks down. Meantime, fetch yourself up something to drink if you’d like. Under the table over there by the loveseat.”

“Got any cups?” Griffith said as he inspected a clear jug half-filled with a liquid the color of chamomile tea.

“You don’t want that stuff,” Constance said. “It’s nectar for the hummingbirds.”

“Hmmmmm hmmm hm,” Griffith emitted from between tight lips.

He shot his tongue toward the jug of hummingbird nectar, raised his eyebrows and watched for Constance’s smile in response.

Constance watched Griffith reach into an ice bucket as he watched her wipe her gritty brow. Ass juddering, she shut down the water with a flick to the nozzle of the hose. Clamped off the spray of insecticide mixture with a twist of her wrist as her tits jigged in time.

Dark soil striped her face.

Sweat streaked her stripped body from her underarms to her waist.

Filthy as this, Constance looked less like a wood nymph than a pig in a poke.

Still and all, her jugs were no joke.

“Pamper with champers,” Griffith mumbled as he held aloft a magnum bottle of thick green glass, dripping with water and butt shedding ice.

“You’ll have to take it straight from the bottle,” Constance said. “We are destitute of manners here, I’m afraid.”

Griffith twisted the bottle into his teeth.

Breathed up a cottony ball of bubbly into his craw.

“Thirsty boy,” Constance chattered.

“Save you some?” he gurgled.

“Finish that one off, if you like.”

“Will do.”

“Should be another bottle icing there in the bucket,” Constance said, absently tweaking a nipple with her thumb.

“I’ll crack ‘er open.”

High, tautly nippled tits swayed as Constance shunted her hips through the density of low foliage. The cork soles of her high-heeled espacirilles oinked wetly as she slithered her toes through the soil and gravel.

The high heels plumped her assmeat out like a plover breast. A streak of peaty liquid snaked from her buttocks break.

Constance sat her wet fanny onto a quilted pillow framed by the armrests of a wrought-iron loveseat that sat beneath an archway constructed of peaty bark profuse with cuntlike blooms of hybrid orchids the size of a woman’s pompadour.

“Hot in here,” Constance said. “Excuse my use of the bucket.”

She picked up the ice bucket and rubbed its coolness to her sweltering tummy.

Sat it onto her lap, oozing her thighs apart.

Griffith shot the newly opened bottle into Constance’s grasp.

She suckered foam.

Reached toward Griffith’s mouth with the bottle in her fist.

After Griffith’s guzzle, Constance gave herself another slug of champagne.

Returned the bottle to the space between her legs where the ice bucket now nestled.

Constance next clicked on the flame of a decorative blowtorch brazier that rested on the clear glass top of the white-painted cocktail table beside her.

Using her fingernails, Constance sliced a minuscule wedge from a cake of pitchlike gum displayed on a saucer held aloft by a jade statuette of a seemingly self-satisfied nude of ambiguous gender.

She spread a serving of the black resin into the recess of a shallow brass cup affixed to one end of a slim bamboo tube.

Constance then inserted the tiny pipebowl into the brazier’s flame and sucked deeply on the narrowly tapering brass mouthpiece that shanked the opposite end of the hollow reed pipesrem.

Her boobs rose and fell. Nipples achingly hard. Tempting for the touch.

“I like the opium pipe,” Griffith remarked.

“So do I,” Constance said. “A curiosity I picked up in a Hong Kong junkstore.”

A wisp of black smoke feathered from the pipe. Constance nicked the pipestem against the rim of the table, nudging a turpble of ashes out into the gravel.

She pressed another gooey dollop into the pipebowl as she breathed out a whisper of invisible fumes through her pulsing nostrils.

“By any chance, Griffith, are you familiar with Oriental calligraphy?”

“Somewhat-on a conversational level.”

“More than I am. What do you make of the design painted along the pipestem here?”

“Chinese. The writing was most likely done with a panda-bristle brush in indigo ink. No breaks in the linestrokes that make up the individual characters. But you can see how the ink at the beginning of the initial stroke after every third character is darker-”

“Uh huh.”

“The artist worked quickly and accurately, systematically completing each character in one unintemipted freehand brushstroke. After each set of three characters the brush was dipped again into the ink before starting the next set.”

“What’s it say?”

“Same thing over and over again. Quotation from a verse often attributed to Lao Tse: Physical and spiritual bliss together are like a kiss in the mist. Same principle as the fortune cookie or an engraved beer mug.”

“Know where the pipe was made?”

“See the way the symbols line up vertically along the bamboo stem? That’s Shanghai style, circa 1919.”

“Really?”

“Could be. Or a copy. Can’t tell. Been used a lot, though.”

“Smoke?”

“Thanks. But not right now. I was okay with the fuzzwine-”

Constance dredged the dripping magnum of Dom Perignon champagne from within the ballast of the silver ice bucket.

She shot some froth down her gullet.

Passed the deep-greeen oversized bottle to Griffith’s waiting fingertips as he sat in a wobbly chair across from her.

Their hands touched.

Constance grinned like a gunman.

Edgy and tough.

“How’s the investigative front, Griffith? Is that horseshit I see decorating the soles of your deck shoes?”

“Just now took a canter across the polo field.”

“Anything show up?”

“No more than what you see on my shoes.”

“Any luck elsewhere?”

“After my chat with your assistant Morrigana, she was eager to tour me through Charity House. Plenty of places to hide-but no pearlies.”

“Surprised?”

“Not at all.”

“Your clothes look rather damp-uncomfortably so, if I do say, Griffith. Been yachting?”

“Clothes feel okay like this,” Griffith shrugged. “Little round of water sports with your friend Veronica. When I interviewed her poolside-well, I guess I just fell in.”

“I’ll bet the little snit pulled you into the pool with her. She’s like that.”

“Thanks for warning me.”

“I figured you’d make out okay with her anyway.”

“I did do that.”

“But no pearls.”

“Reet.”

“Anything pop up at all? Still haven’t told me whether you turned any clues or whether you’re given up or what.”

“No clues. I haven’t given up.”

“So what’s the story, Sherlock? Or are you stiff?” Griffith sucked down some bubbly. “I say. Good stuff you got here for the thirst. Now these pearls of yours. The ones you say are missing. You see, I say I haven’t seen ‘em around.

You say you haven’t seen ‘em around. Your housemates-ditto, they say no see.

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t around. Doesn’t mean they are. What’s your guess?”

“You think they’re gone from Charity House?”

“You mean the house itself? Yeah, they’re gone from there for sure-wouldn’t you say?”