Rick Jennings: Pet shop pussy

It's him, the same guy, the one who comes in the window, she thought, still not sure if she was somehow hallucinating, seeing a mirage, imagining the young man as he stood below her on the hill, his own eyes trained on a powerfully built liver-colored Doberman pinscher.

As in the dream, the stranger wore faded and skintight blue jeans, even scuffed square-toed cowboy boots as well. A work shirt as equally faded and bleached as his dungarees covered his muscular torso and Pamela smiled nervously, wondering if she was finally going off the deep end.

But when she blinked rapidly, the image before her didn't waver or fade away in the least. If anything, she could see the young man even more clearly. All the details of his face and body, details she had memorized as if the dream had come to her full-blown, not a product of her own subconscious yearnings, matched one against the other.

She shivered again, spooked out by the apparition that had magically come to life. She had waited so long to meet a man like the one who raped her, alone in her bedroom, that now she didn't know if she should just turn around and run off in the opposite direction.

But before she could even recover from her surprise, or regain her self-composure, their eyes met and for the life of her she neither wanted to nor could she even pull away from the young man's wide and unswerving stare.

He turned his head to the side and looked up at her and if there was such a thing as love at first sight, Pam knew that she was the victim of it, of Cupid's dart. Her knees felt weak and bravely, feeling silly and as adolescent as a blushing schoolgirl, she curled her lips up into a smile.

It was not ignored.

The fellow grinned broadly, just as she saw Bix race into view, running circles around the liver colored Doberman. The pinscher was a male, but surprisingly enough he and Bix seemed to get along fine, enjoying each other's company, enjoying too the canine games the Scottie so delighted in.

Bix yapped merrily and darted right underneath the Doberman's body. The smooth-coated dog barked loudly and sprang off down the hill, Bix's short stubby legs flying out behind him as he hurried after in hot pursuit.

"Holmes!" the young man called out as the two dogs raced down the hill, so involved in their own games and animal pleasures that, at least for the time being, they were oblivious to their masters.

"Bix, get over here!" Pam cried out, her feet moving in front of her. Almost mechanically she strode down the hill, one foot placed before the other as if she was just learning how to walk. She was headed right towards the young man and a smile still played across her lips.

"Holmes, get your ass over here… now!" the guy yelled out.

The Doberman stopped short, lifted his fox-like snout and then began to race back up the hill. Bix was right behind him, a black streak against the pinscher's short liver-tinted body. By the time the two dogs had arrived at the young man's feet, Pam was standing right before him, still clutching Bix's leather lead.

"That's a good boy, Holmes. Now just quiet down and sit still for a minute," the fellow said good-naturedly.

Pamela knew she was in love and the very notion made her shudder once again. She wiped her forehead with the tips of her fingers, able to feel how she had suddenly begun to sweat profusely. "You too, Bix," she said, her voice cracking and her throat gone dry and parched.

"Bix? Why Bix?" asked the young man, turning to stare at her the way he had done earlier. And, for a second time, their eyes met, the stare held rigid and unmoving.

"Why?" she heard herself replying to his question. "He's just… just a little Bix, that's all. Silly. I can't remember why I decided to name him that. It just came to me when I saw him, that's all."

"You're right," the young man agreed with another disarmingly open and good-natured grin. "He does look like a Bix."

"And Holmes?" asked Pam. "Where's his double-brimmed cap and his drooping pipe?"

"Oh," the young man laughed, "I only let him wear those things in the privacy of my apartment. Wouldn't want anyone getting the wrong idea. Actually, it was the look in his eyes that made the decision for me. Seemed so piercing, so inquisitive, even when he was just a pup."

Pam glanced over at the Doberman. He was sitting at his master's feet, his great wet tongue hanging out of his mouth. Her eyes slid down, caught sight of the long thinly furred sheath that concealed the dog's cock and then jerked back to the young man's smiling face.

"Want to go for a cup of coffee?" he suddenly blurted out, almost as if he was now as nervous as she was.

"What?" she said, startled by the swiftness of the stranger's invitation. "I… I don't even know your name."

"And if you did… would it make any difference?" he said. "But to set your mind at ease, I'm listed in the Manhattan directory, under W for Whitlock. Justin Whitlock."

"Pam Harper," she replied, finding herself extending her hand as they grinned back at each other and shook hands like two businessmen meeting each other for the first time before sitting down to lunch.

"Good, then it's settled," he said, whereupon he attached the chain leash he held to Holmes' collar.

Pam clicked Bix's lead into place and the two of them, led by their two straining panting dogs, moved down the hill towards the 79th Street exit from the park. Pam felt at a complete loss for words, nodding her head numbly as Justin spoke to her.

She was growing acutely aware of the way he kept glancing at her from the corner of his eye. It was a look she had seen before, as recently as the previous evening in fact, when Dick Truman had taken her out for dinner.

But whereas Truman's leering wolfish grin had turned her off, had frightened her in point of fact, she accepted Justin's obvious interest in her with something that resembled downright pleasure and considerable delight.

She had never met a man this way, a complete and total stranger. For all she knew he could be a homicidal maniac, a psychotic, sexually maladjusted. But even if all that was true, nothing was going to stop her from finally taking a chance with her life and doing the one thing which now came to her as naturally and easily as the very act of breathing, of inhaling and exhaling as she walked alongside of him.

When they reached Fifth Avenue they turned left, heading uptown. They walked past the crowds surging in and out of the Metropolitan Museum, past some of the embassy buildings that were located along Fifth Avenue, in view of the park.

She didn't ask him where they were going, if he intended to stop at a coffee shop or head straight back to his apartment. Secretly, she hoped he would choose the latter and when he caught hold of her elbow and guided her across Fifth Avenue and down Eighty-eighth Street, she smiled to herself and didn't utter a single word of protest.

"Five flight walkup," he announced when they reached the unrenovated brownstone where he rented an apartment. "Sorry about that, but I refuse to be subsidized by dear old dad."

"I don't care. I like to walk," she replied, shy again as she followed him up the granite steps which led into the pocket-sized vestibule and lobby of the building.

Justin dug into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out a ring of keys, selecting the correct one to unlock the front door. Then, moving down the dimly illuminated and narrow hallway, he led Pam upstairs to his apartment.

She followed right behind him; able to hear the way her heart was beating like a steam-hammer in her breast, able to feel the nervous pulsing throb of blood in her temples. But even more than that, she was becoming acutely aware of another sensation, one that she had experienced in the past, but rarely if ever as a result of being in the company and presence of a man.