Danube Adele - Quicksilver Dreams

“Taylor, I need to roll calls from the car on my way to lunch. Take notes. Adam’s trying to fuck with me on this deal we made for him. He’s got a fucking diva complex, and he’s going to blow the whole fucking thing if he doesn’t quit his pansy-ass whining.”

Reggie was absolutely inconsistent and made no apologies for it. On the one hand, he was hugely muscular and fierce looking, maybe Samoan in origin, with short dark hair and a goatee. But then, he had a love of these delicate figurines that he kept wholly pristine in display cases. His entire office was downright precious, the furnishings delicate in shades of violet. He was rude, disrespectful and belittling to most everyone he encountered who wasn’t a client, but he had this sweet, lovey-dovey, shmoopy-as-hell voice he used when his boyfriend called.

I was used to him.

I read through his freshly updated call log. “By the way, Frank called. He said he was going to have to cancel dinner tonight. He’s got some kind of emergency and needs to pack for a flight out tomorrow.” Frank was the lovey-dovey partner who rocked Reggie’s world, but his smooth British tones always gave me a strange itchy tingle in the middle of my back. No reason why, since I hadn’t actually met the guy. He’d always been what other people would think of as perfectly lovely and charming over the phone, but one person’s friendliness is another person’s nosiness. I just don’t like personal questions, and he always seemed to have some for me.

“Frank called?” Reggie’s face flushed a violent red. “Frank called and you didn’t tell me? How many times do I have to fucking tell you to put him through no matter what? Jesus fuck! When he calls, put him through. Put. Him. Through!”

I took a deep breath and did my best not to breathe fire. “Frank told me he didn’t have time to talk and said to just pass the message along. He said he’d order in and meet you at home.”

Reggie continued to scowl for a moment. “Oh,” he muttered, and he started out the door of our small suite. Long ago, I stopped looking for any form of apology or remorse from him when he blew up at me inappropriately.

“Do you want me to get Adam on the line for you?”

“No. Forget calls. I need to call Frank. Go to lunch.” He waved a hand dismissively as he left.

And so I was able to put my calls to voice mail, grab my purse and run downstairs to share my juicy tidbit with Cynthia.

“Sure, women can have wet dreams. I’ve had orgasms in my sleep. They aren’t strong, but the feeling is there if it’s a good enough sex dream.” Cynthia, her platinum hair twisted into an elegant knot on top of her head, was chowing down on a tuna-fish sandwich that smelled god-awful. I kept my opinion to myself and focused on the subject at hand.

“Really? This is a first for me.” I took a healthy bite of my apple.

“Tied down, huh?” Her toffee eyes smiled into mine. She sat back, looking dreamily up at the ceiling, her patrician features as perfectly made up as usual. You can see why I thought she was a total bitch at first. Effortless. And she always says the right things too. “I don’t think I’ve ever been tied down. My ex was not an adventurous kind of guy. You know. He was a geologist. Bloodless. So how was it?”

“I can’t even tell you how amazing it was. It was like I was so awake and aware through the whole thing! But I wasn’t...”

“You’ve been working too much and not relaxing enough. You really need to cut back on your hours at the club.”

“I wish I could. I need the money. Maybe after I get my next raise I’ll quit. Besides, it’s just on Fridays and Saturdays.”

“Which tells me that you aren’t getting any time to be social. You are this beautiful, healthy young woman, and it’s part of our genetic drive to seek a mate.”

“Ha! You sound like Wild Kingdom or something. Say it again with a British accent.”

“I’m not kidding. Look at you! You have these gorgeous, big blue eyes that half the chicks working here hate you for and a killer body that most of the guys here love you for.”

“And a pixielike face, I know. You’re making me blush.” I grinned, having heard all this before. She’d been on a campaign to hook me up with someone since she’d known me.

Cynthia was the polar opposite of me, being a tall glass of lemonade. While I barely topped five feet three inches, Cynthia was willowy, wearing clothes the way models on the runway made them look. Lucky duck. We all have pluses and minuses, right?

“No, seriously.” Cynthia warmed to her topic. “Since I’ve known you, you haven’t had a serious guy in your life, and I’ve known you more than a year. You have never talked about anyone that mattered to you, past or present. I’ve also never seen you go out on dates or even show an interest. I would think you were going lesbian, except you don’t show an interest in women, either. It’s no wonder you’re starting to have side effects.”

“I can’t help it if no one around me is interesting enough to get my attention.”

“I think you’re just hiding out. I think you experienced betrayal from your mother, your grandmother, your aunt, and now you don’t take chances.”

I had a moment of pause. First as I tried to absorb the pow feeling to my gut without showing how it hurt, and second trying to remember when I’d discussed my childhood with Cynthia. I didn’t mind that she knew, but I hadn’t been bodily prepared for the emotional hit. I mean, of course I must have told her, but I didn’t want to think of how my mom took off in a drug haze and left me with Cruella, my sociopathic aunt who could barely take care of herself, in a rundown trailer park in Pomona, California.

Fighting back the burn in my eyes, because for some reason her evaluation really stung, I replied, “I’m trying to pay the bills, Dr. Ruth. If I don’t succeed, I have no one, and I choose those words deliberately, no one to fall back on. I don’t have the lovely family that you were blessed with, and I’m not trying to start a fight here by saying that. You do have a lovely family that cares about what happens to you. Just let me share this with you without getting all analytical on me.”

Cynthia’s eyes narrowed, and her pink, heart-shaped lips pursed slightly. Finally she smiled. “Okay. So what did he look like?”

Back on track. I gave a smile of relief. “I was blindfolded! I couldn’t see, but he definitely had amazing fingers.”

“Blindfolded and tied down while a guy gives you an orgasm. I wouldn’t mind having a dream like that one.”

“Well, if you’re hoping for the real thing soon, I know a certain guy playing at the club tonight.”

“Really? Who?”

“Shep’s band is starting at ten.”

“Shep.” Cynthia closed her eyes for a moment and sighed. “He’s scruffy, dirty, unkempt and broke most of the time, but there’s something about him. Isn’t there? It’s in the eyes. They’re soulful. It’s a shame he got evicted from our apartment complex. I enjoyed knowing he was an apartment away.”

“I thought it would happen sooner, truthfully.” I tossed my apple core into her wastepaper basket. “That guy was always getting fired from jobs and driving his roommates nuts.”

“Who were his roommates again? I don’t think I ever noticed who they were.”

“Nondescript. One guy was average height, had gut protrusion and seemed to work at the video store that just shut down.”

“Talk about an anachronism.”

“Yeah, well, that’s probably why it shut down. Anyway, the other guy was a waiter trying to be an actor or something. Annoying, weasely pretty boy who was too good for mere mortals.”