Pamela Browning - Life Is A Beach - Life Is A Beach / A Real-Thing Fling

“I don’t—”

“You do! You grabbed it up off the floor when I was dancing! I saw you!”

“But—”

“Hef gave it to me as a token of his esteem when I was Playmate of the Month!” Brenda was getting decidedly red in the face, almost as red as Slade remembered the disputed bikini top to be.

“Slade, is any of this true?” said Karma through tight lips.

“Some of it,” he admitted.

“Great. I’ve just signed up a pervert at Rent-a-Yenta,” Karma muttered under her breath, but at least his admission did what he hadn’t been able to do. It got Karma moving. She set off down the sidewalk at a pace that could only be described as rapid.

Slade turned to face Brenda, thinking that he might be able to talk her into being reasonable. “Your swimsuit top is at the houseboat. Stop by tomorrow and I’ll give it to you.”

“No,” said Brenda, stubbornness flaring in her eyes. “I want it now.”

“Tomorrow. No problem,” he said, backing away as placatingly as he could.

“Now! We’re going there right away! If you think I’m going to let you keep any article of my clothing for any length of time, you’re nuts. After what you did to my friends—”

“They deserved it,” he told her. “They tried to take my wallet.”

“I don’t care,” Brenda said, on the verge, he was sure, of another tirade or maybe hysterics from the look of her. But then fate intervened in the form of a very large woman walking a very large and very hairy dog, which began to sniff around Brenda’s feet in the way that dogs checked out fireplugs.

Uh-oh, thought Slade as the dog lifted its leg and Brenda curdled the air around them with a high-pitched scream. The dog panicked at the sound of Brenda’s ungodly shriek, and it began to run around in circles. The woman yanked on the leash and yelled, “Heel! Heel!” Brenda kept on screaming. And he, Slade, made tracks.

Fortunately there were a lot of strollers out indulging in South Beach ambiance and the brine-scented night air, and fortunately, he spotted Karma’s head about a block away. By the time he’d caught up with her, she had exceeded loping speed and was jogging along quite efficiently.

“Karma,” he said, grabbing her arm. “I can explain.”

“No explanation necessary. I saw you pull that red bra from your pocket this morning when you stopped to inquire about Rent-a-Yenta.”

“It’s not a bra. It’s a bikini top.”

“It serves the same function. Don’t worry, I’ll refund your registration fee.”

“I don’t want a refund,” he said, glancing over his shoulder as Brenda’s screams abruptly stopped. “I want a wife.”

“Fat chance,” Karma said.

He saw that red topknot flopping its way toward them. “I don’t want to talk to this woman. I can explain. Where can we hide?”

“Like they say, you can run but you can’t hide,” Karma said grimly.

“It was all a fluke. I grabbed her bikini top off the floor when she threw it off while she was dancing on the hood of a cut-down ’57 Chevy that was used as a couch in an apartment with some strange people I didn’t know. It’s true, I swear it.”

Karma stopped dead in her tracks in front of a yellow-stuccoed apartment house and stared at him. “That story sounds absolutely too bizarre to be made up,” she said.

“I didn’t make it up. I have no interest in Brenda. Isn’t there somewhere we can go?”

Karma’s eyes moved sideways and took in their pursuer, who was now only half a block away. They were standing in the slim shadow of a palm tree, so there was a chance that Brenda hadn’t actually seen them yet.

“In here,” said Karma, yanking him into the lobby of the yellow-stuccoed place. Slade had the impression of dusty potted ficus trees and tables piled high with dog-eared magazines. A bunch of elderly men sat around tables playing dominoes.

“Hello, Karma dear,” one of them said, his words punctuated by the sound of dominoes slapping on wood. “Your uncle Nate is out.”

“I think he went somewhere with Mrs. Rothstein. He borrowed my Old Spice,” said another. The rest of the men barely looked up.

“I’ll just drop by his apartment,” Karma said, edging toward the elevator and pulling Slade along with her. The men, focused on their game, barely paid attention.

Slade darted an anxious look at the front door. No sign of Brenda, or had she already passed by?

The elevator door opened, and Karma tugged Slade into it. “It’s okay. We can cut through my uncle’s apartment to the fire escape. From there we can—”

“I appreciate this,” Slade said. “You don’t know how much.”

Karma stared straight ahead. “Don’t try to weasel your way back into my good graces,” she said. “I can’t place any weirdos with my female clients.”

He looked over at Karma, a slight smile playing across his lips. “I am entirely normal,” he said. “In every way.” Her mouth was unusually full, and her cheeks were flushed. Without knowing why, he bent his head, hesitated and kissed her full on the lips.

He thought she might have gasped beneath his mouth, but he was so intent on lengthening and deepening the kiss that he wasn’t sure. What he was sure about was that her lips were softly pliant, her mouth was warm and willing, and she was one sensuous woman.

The elevator bumped to a stop, and he released her. Without saying a word, she walked out. He followed her, his mouth tingling, his ears ringing. And all from just one kiss.

Looking rattled, Karma led him into her uncle’s apartment and raised a window before turning to face him. “You shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

“It was good for me. Wasn’t it good for you?” He affected an air of studied innocence.

“It was unnecessary and uncalled for. And—”

“—and very nice,” he murmured, gazing deep into her eyes, which dazzled him with their complexity of feeling.

She bit her lip and appeared to collect herself. “Let’s go,” she said, and she stepped out onto the metal fire-escape stairs.

“Now what?”

“We go that way,” she said, pointing toward the next roof.

It was easy, clambering across the roof, and the next one, and the next. Throughout their curious journey, with the city of Miami Beach spread out before them, with the scent of the sea in his nostrils, all he could think was that he wanted to kiss Karma again. And soon.

“This is the Blue Moon,” she said when they had reached a roof where lawn chairs were set along the edge of the building facing the ocean. The chairs on the sun deck were occupied by couples doing—well, who knew what? Slade had an idea, but he doubted the advisability of asking Karma if she would like to indulge. He was pretty sure she’d say no.

Karma marched across the roof and opened a door leading to a narrow hallway inside. “I suppose you want to be invited into my apartment for a drink or something,” she said, squarely facing him under the glare of an unshaded bulb dangling from the ceiling.

“Yes,” he said because he had never wanted anything so much in his life. “Yes, I reckon I would like that just fine.”

Karma sighed and massaged the back of her neck. “I’ll have to think this over,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.

“You might want to come in to the office and look at some of my female clients’ videos,” she said.

“I thought you fired me,” he said. “As a client, I mean.”

“I did. But now I think you’re okay.”

“Because I kissed you?” he said, opting for the bold approach.

“No, because I believe that you didn’t have any psycho reasons for having that bra—”

“Swimsuit top.”