A Twist Of Noir 316 - Malachi Stone

A MAN AFTER MY OWN HEART - MALACHI STONE

A Modified Excerpt From Malachi's Novel HEARTBALM

Nothing like the privacy of my law office for cruising cyberporn. Eyes riveted to the monitor, beginning to doubt my sanity, I relearned the old lesson that pornography, even homegrown amateur porn co-starring my own wife Diane, is ultimately boring. After an hour’s viewing and reviewing ARLENE AND HER GOING AT IT, I actually found myself losing interest. My mind began to wander. Ennui crept in as I continued to observe Diane and Arlene spelunking below the belt, eating each other hollow, doing the mattress hokey pokey, Arlene wearing nothing but the geriatric wraparounds. And, as generally occurs whenever I become bored, legal analysis comes to the fore.

Having seen the video, would I now have to give Arlene’s husband Howard Kuhn back his five thou because of conflict of interest? Not necessarily; most conflicts could be waived in writing after full and fair disclosure to the client. And Howard and I had already bonded. A security contractor, at my furtive request he had installed a hidden webcam in the women’s john as a professional courtesy. But how best to approach Howard with the unsettling news that his newly-retained divorce attorney’s wife was the one carrying on with Arlene?

As they teach you in every twelve-step group, one has to focus on the positive. And there were a few pluses in the current situation. First of all, there was that peculiar sensation of relief. At last I had something on Diane that I could use against her whenever I wanted. My perfect, church-attending, child-rearing unyielding Diane had her Achilles’ heel. As far as my marriage was concerned, I was now running a dead heat with Diane in the degeneracy department. Second, there was that curious impression of freedom. Perhaps license would be a better word. I deemed myself free to cheat without any sense of guilt whatsoever. I would be no better and no worse than Diane as far as infidelity was concerned.

The mental release was thoroughly exhilarating. I recognized the emotion: gratitude. I was grateful to Diane for betraying me with another woman. She had given me what I could never have obtained for myself: escape from an impossibly stultifying code of moral behavior. Even the realization that she had shed those forty pounds not for me but rather to make herself attractive to her female paramour failed to ignite jealousy in my newly-enlightened libertine soul.

I felt so good I called Diane at home. Time to have some fun with her. She sounded pleasant, satisfied.

“How’s everything going at the office?”

“Cool. How’re things with you?”

“Oh, fine, I guess. When are you planning on coming home? I wanted to go to the health club this afternoon.”

“Really? How long might that take, do you suppose?”

“Oh, I don’t know; the usual.” Now I understood the underlying reason for Diane’s meticulous care with her personal appearance before her thrice-weekly workouts, why her makeup and hair had to be perfect.

“I have some good news.”

“What’s that?”

“We signed a new divorce client today. Howard Kuhn. Ever heard that name? Howard Kuhn?”

Silence. “Should I have?”

“No reason I can think of. His wife’s name is Arlene. He tells me she’s a member at the same health club as you. How’s that for a coincidence?”

“If you say so.” Long pause. “So who brought up the subject of the health club in the first place?”

“You know me. I always try to conduct a careful and thorough intake interview. You never can tell when some trivial little tidbit of knowledge might prove decisive and crucial.”

“You know what you’re doing, I guess.”

“That’s very true, Diane. No guesswork about it. And what’s more, I know what you’re doing.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, nothing bad. What I mean is, whatever you may be doing, it’s all right with me. It obviously agrees with you, and I have no problem with it. No problem whatsoever.”

“O-kay,” Diane said uncertainly.

“Well, I just wanted to check in and see how you were.”

“Are you coming home now? It’s nearly lunchtime.”

“In a while. Let me wrap up a few loose ends before I shut things down. Maybe you’d better go ahead and eat without me.” I suppressed a laugh at that one.

“Well, don’t work too hard.”

“Don’t worry; I won’t. Don’t you, either.”

I debated actually getting some paperwork done, but decided against it. Instead, I called Drey’s number again. I’d been trying her cell off and on all afternoon. Kendra Martin, one of the most outspoken members of the twelve-step group for sex addicts Diane made me join last year, wanted all her men friends to call her Drey. She thought it sounded sexy. Drey was what folks around St. Louis derisively refer to as a “hoosier,” a born and bred full-blooded member of the WT. This time, she answered. They should never let guys like me play with the phone.

“Where have you been, Drey? I’ve been calling you steady.”

“You try me at work?”

“No.”

“Well, then, that’s why. I got me them three jobs to go to, remember? Just come home to change into my Cracker Barrel uniform.”

“Well, if you’re busy—”

“Now don’t go getting’ all limp and fainthearted on me. I always got time for you, Ricky. Why you been trying so hard to call me? As if I didn’t know.”

“I was remembering something you said, when it was just the two of us in bed together at your place the other day.”

“What was that?”

“How all I had to do was call whenever I needed you.”

Long silence at her end.

“Remember, Drey? Remember saying that to me? I’ll always remember, and treasure those words of yours.”

Another extended silence; I thought maybe she had hung up, then, “I’ll tell you what, Ricky. You’re fixin’ to make this country girl cry.”

“Happy cry, I hope. Wouldn’t want a sad cry.”

“Happy cry. Where you at now, hon?”

“My office.”

“You busy?”

“Never too busy for you, Drey.”

Still wearing her waitress uniform, she made it to the office in the time it took for the little blue pill to dissolve in my stomach. I unlocked the door for her, closed the blinds and greeted her with our very first kiss. Drey was an aggressive tongue-kisser, burrowing hers into my mouth with a persistent flutter.

“What kept you?”

“Did I keep you waiting long? Never even took time to go’t the little girls’ room.”

“Go ahead if you want; it’s in the back.”

I raced to the computer in my private office as soon as I heard the bathroom door close, clicked on the webcam icon and hit the record button before Drey had time to take down her panties.

An apparition reflected in the monitor caused me to turn around. A seething seven-foot hairless apparition of solid muscle in biker boots, biker jacket and biker chains towered over me.

There was no escape, so I tried for levity. “Is this where I’m supposed to say Klaatu barada nikto?”

Harold “Snug” Robbins, my new secretary’s insanely jealous biker husband, must not have been a science fiction fan. He took one step forward and pulled out the phone cord as easily as if it were a silken thread. He leered at me with anticipation, lacing his powerful fingers and cracking his knuckles in a manner I’d never seen outside of pro wrestling. Despite my terror, or maybe because of it, the little blue pill was busily giving me a hard-on. Just then I heard Drey’s voice behind me saying, “That’s a load off my mind—Harold! What the shit’re you doin’ here?”

Snug said, “Drey!”

Drey ran and hugged him. He lifted her as effortlessly as if she were a rag doll.

“Ricky, this ol’ boy’s a friend of mine, Harold. Harold, Ricky.”

Snug’s expression darkened at the introduction. “This here’s the maggot that’s been committing adultery with my wife.”

“Oh, bullshit, Harold,” Drey said, “only one committing adultery with Ricky here is me. I oughta know. If he’d been porkin’ your wife, he’d a bragged about it at the meetings sure as hell. I never heard him mention it once. Plus, I been steady wearin’ him out with sex. See, me and him’re what they call fuck buddies?” Saying the last like a question.

“That ain’t what I heard.”

“Well, you heard wrong, Harold. Matter of fact, before you showed up, we was fixin’ to get it on right here on he’s desk—holy fuck shit!” Drey had noticed my monitor, the video still recording. “You mean to tell me you was watchin’the whole time I was in there tinklin’? Why, you tricky little bastard! See how you are?”

I tried a shit-eating grin. “Wanna see?”

Snug leered and said, “Yeah.”

Drey cuffed him on the shoulder, then rubbed her hand and howled, “Ow! That hurt!”

“Have a seat, Harold,” I said uneasily. Better to have him sitting down, although I didn’t hold out much hope of escaping once he chose to get violent. Heart, my secretary, had said that Snug knew all the crippling moves, that he could ruin a man with his bare hands using pressure and counter-pressure. “Here, let me start it for you. Want the earphones?”

The headset looked like a toy on Snug’s enormous shaved head. The three of us watched while Drey wailed, “Can’t a girl even get no privacy goin’ to the can?” and, “You ain’t gonna post that up on that there Internet, are you?”

The video clip looped over and over again, until Drey looked like a woman who had overdosed on a diuretic. Finally I closed it and asked Snug, “So Harold, what do you think?”

Snug pondered the question. “Felliniesque,” he said at last.

“Felliniesque?”

“Is that something nasty?” Drey asked.

“It holds a somber satiric mirror up to life’s absurdities,” Snug explained. “Kind of like what they said in Cahiers du Cinema about Fellini’s body of work. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Bunuel, too: that starkness meant to shock us out of our bourgeois sensibilities. Plus, I like watching women pee. Do you have any more?”

What the hell. I concluded the impromptu avant garde film festival with the video of my Diane going down. When it was over, everyone was quiet for a while. Finally, Drey broke the uncomfortable silence.

“That wife of yours sure likes to eat pussy.” She pursed her lips, blew a lazy kiss in my direction and added, “Must run in the family.”

“Who knew?” I said.

“It don’t bother you none, her lickin’ on some other woman’s twat?” she asked.

“It’d sure bother me,” Snug said. “In Romans One even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural.”

“Romans One? That some new club I don’t know about?” Drey asked.

“I guess it means we have an open marriage,” I shrugged. “You know what they say: when in Rome.”

“That’s the trouble with being married to a beautiful woman,” Snug went on. “It can be exquisite psychological torture once you suspect her of being unfaithful. Like with Heart and me, it got so bad there were certain passages from Boccaccio’s Decameron I couldn’t bear to read without breaking down and frankly weeping.”

“Is that a fact?” I said. “You know something, Snug? You’re a deceptively complex, many-faceted individual.”

“Bet your ass,” he grunted.

“So Heart gave you cause to suspect her of infidelity?” I said, falling back on the initial interview cheat sheet I carried around in my head for new divorce clients.

“Constantly,” Snug said. “Like every time I’d ride with the brothers there’d be some indefinable thing about her when I came back home. Something subtly different about her attitude. You know the way a woman acts after she’s been had? Her facial expressions, the lazy way she moves? Not defiant exactly, but smirking, like maybe some man had come over and fucked the hell out of her while I was gone, the two of them clapping a set of cuckold’s horns on my head like one a them Viking helmets they wear.”

“I know the ones you mean.”

“No shit you do. I never had to worry about Heart wanting to be with women, like the problem you’re seein’ with your old lady. Damn, that’s heavy duty!”

“Maybe I should file a heartbalm suit against Arlene Kuhn.”

“That her name?” Drey asked.

“Why?” Snug responded.

“Just curious, is all. What’s a, what’d you call it, a heartbalm suit, Ricky?”

“A lawsuit claiming damages against a person for allegedly seducing your wife. In the old days, they called it Alienation of Affections.”

“Isn’t that kind of archaic?” Snug asked. “I didn’t know they still had those.”

“The cause of action still exists, but because of abuses the General Assembly enacted the Anti-Heartbalm statute barring punitive damages.”

“Ain’t it awful the kind a crazy shit people’ll run out and sue each other for?” Drey caviled. “Why’d they wanna go and have some stupid lawsuit like that in the first place?”

“I suppose the initial policy considerations were to discourage the aggrieved party from taking more physically aggressive measures.”

“Say what?”

“In other words, to keep the husband from beating the crap out of the wife’s boyfriend. Or challenging him to a duel.”

“Hey, wait a minute!” Snug had thought of something. Something that put me in danger, I feared. “Have you been peeping at my wife going to the toilet?” he demanded.

“Absolutely not, I swear. Matter of fact, the guy only installed this setup a few hours ago, after she’d already left for the day. That’s never gonna happen, Snug—I mean, Harold.”

From Snug’s expression, I didn’t know whether he was about to tear my head off or start to cry. He lurched from my chair and bolted for the bathroom. I heard the sound of splintering wood, the yanking of cables. A moment later, he returned with the webcam dangling from his grasp like a gouged-out eyeball.

“Show’s over,” he said.

Drey and I stared at the ruination of Howard Kuhn’s ill-fated handiwork. I shut the computer down and turned off the power strip. Drey said, “I don’t know about you all, but this gal could sure use a drink right about now. You got you a jug a anything with a kick to it around here, Ricky?”

“I imagine I could scare something up,” I said. In fact, a grateful client, unaware of my twelve-step involvement, had presented me with a fifth of Bushmill’s last Christmas. The seal had never been broken. Until now, that is.

“Hope you don’t mind drinking it out of coffee mugs,” I said, returning from the kitchen after pouring generous slugs for the three of us. “Irish coffee without the coffee.”

“Coffee ain’t good for ya anyhoo,” Drey said. “Gives me the jitters.”

“Couple shots of this will calm your nerves right down.”

Snug drank his in two gulps, then motioned for more. I poured him four fingers and brought the bottle this time. We sat and drank for what seemed like an hour, but turned out to be three as I discovered when I looked at my Blackberry. Five missed calls: two from home, three from Tyranno. I hadn’t noticed the vibration, so I turned it back to ring mode. The phone hadn’t rung at the office. Snug must have ripped out the phone at the receptionist desk on his way in while I was rapt with attention watching Drey on my monitor. And Tyranno wasn’t going to go away. Tyranno—another of the men who called Kendra “Drey”—had been talking shakedown ever since he’d stolen that sex video I’d made of Drey and me. But with a few shots of the Irish in me, right now I didn’t care.

“Tyranno, Tyranno, Tyranno, suck my bananno,” I lilted.

“Thass the thing about the good stuff, it don’t give you no hangover,” Drey was saying to herself. By this time, she had shed her waitress uniform and had her breasts out from when she’d pulled her stretch bra up to flash us and then left it there in what she’d called “undecent exposure.”

“You know one sure way to tell you’re an alcoholic?”

“Whazzat?”

“One sure way you can tell you’re an alcoholic,” I went on, “is the no hangovers. That and extraordinary capacity.”

“Everybody gets hangovers,” Snug said, “whether they own up to it or not. The thing with your alcoholics is, they start right in drinking at the first sign of a hangover, so naturally they never remember it afterwards. It’s a form of denial.”

“Thank you, Dr. Phil,” Drey said.

“I come from a family constellation wracked with substance abuse,” Snug said. “I’m not just talking out my ass here.”

“I never said you was. All’s I know is I wind up with a hell of a hangover ever’ time I go drinkin’ that cheap shit.”

The Blackberry rang where I had foolishly left it lying on my desk. Before I could stop her, Drey reached for it and picked it up. “Grab n’ Go,” she said, laughing hilariously. Then, “What? Well, who the hell’s this?” I lunged, took it from her and ended the call. “God, I hate rude people,” she said.

“Who was that?” I asked apprehensively as I checked the caller ID. Sure enough, it was from home.

“I dunno. Some woman.”

“Oh, no! Oh shit!”

“Didn’t nobody teach your clients telephone manners? You don’t never call somebody up and first thing outta your mouth’s ‘who’s this.’ I get that alla time at work and it drives me loco.”

“Oh shit,” I moaned again. “Oh shit!”

The Blackberry rang again. Harder this time, I thought, and more insistently. “Don’t touch it,” I yelled, even though it rested securely in my hand. We all sat in silence while I put the call on speaker; my recorded greeting had never sounded more bored and off-putting. Then the beep, and Diane’s angry voice.

“Ricky, pick up this phone! Ricky! I know you’re listening; answer this phone right now or I don’t know what!” Then an exasperated huff and the slam of the receiver at her end like a plank hitting concrete. I threw back a shot and shook my head.

“You’re the only guy I know with worse woman troubles than mine,” Snug said.

“What’s she bitchin’ about?” Drey added. “You got her dead to rights on videotape.”

“DVD actually, but I don’t want to get her dead to rights, I want to preserve my marriage. That’s what I’ve always wanted. That’s all I ever wanted.”

“You know, Ricky, I had you figured wrong; you ain’t half bad,” Snug said. “You’re a man after my own heart.”

“Thanks, Harold.”

“‘Thanks, Harold,’” Drey parroted, irritation creeping into her voice. “Ain’t ya never heard the expression ‘two’s company, three’s a crowd?’ In case ya hadn’t noticed, me and my fuck buddy Ricky was fixin’ to get it on before you showed up, Harold. Present company expected. Know what I mean?”

“You mean ‘present company excepted,’” I corrected her.

“You’re sayin’ you wanna make this a threesome, Ricky?” Drey asked.

“Not accepted. Excepted.”

She shrugged. “I guess I’m willin’ if you are. I know for a fact both you fellas’re hung like goddamn Clydesdale horses. Whip it out for us, Harold: I know you ain’t shy.”

Harold looked timid despite Drey’s claim. He stood and said, “You first, Ricky.”

I looked at Snug and he looked at me in a weird Mexican standoff. The only sound was the clock tower chiming nine bells.

“Hell, I’ll go first,” Drey conceded. “Can’t wait all night while you two trade meaningful glances.” She wriggled the rest of the way out of her bra and mussed her hair. “Would have to be wearin’ the littlest damn thong I own,” she said, peeling it down and kicking it across the room as though going for the extra point.

“You’re beautiful, Drey,” I sighed. After a few drinks, she was.

“Have another drink and lose your laundry, Ricky,” Drey invited. “Show us what you got danglin’.”

My erect cock strained for release against my Fruit of the Looms as I surveyed her nudity. I had impetuously ignored the warnings to avoid alcohol to excess when under the little blue pill’s influence. Hung like a goddamn Clydesdale, was I? Impetuously, I stripped naked, answering her and Snug’s challenges, my back to the room. With an ecdysiast’s flourish, I spun around to face both of them, erect as a pagan god. Snug’s eyes widened. Drey was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Drey?”

“She went to make a call,” Snug said, pointing to the door.

I found her in the outer office, stark naked and oblivious to the full-length clear glass front door and the fluorescent lights blazing, talking into my Blackberry. She must not have known how to take it off speaker. I heard her arguing, “He’s been steady tellin’ me and tellin’ me how he ain’t got a red cent to he’s name.”

“An’ you sittin’ there listenin’, and believin’ what he sayin’? Don’t you know a lawyer with no money is like a skunk with no stink?”

“They got them de-stinkered skunks now. People make pets out of ’em.”

I killed the lights before crossing the room. Startled, she said, “Hey!”

“Make a muthafuckin’ de-stinkered pet outta you you don’t put the man on the phone.”

“Here he is,” Drey said, cowed. To me, she mouthed, “It’s Tyranno,” handing me the Blackberry. I took it off speaker after she left me with it. Drey returned to my inner sanctum and closed the door. I sat down at Heart’s desk and answered.

“Mistah Lawyer Ricky Galeer,” he gloated.

“Hear you have something that belongs to me, Tyranno.”

“Belongs to you? How you figure?”

“Or technically to my daughter.”

“How you think that big leg daughter of yours’d like seein’ her daddy cock stuck allaway up some woman’s ass ain’t her momma? And cummin’? Like a nigga’s dog. But don’ fret yet: hundred thou buys you another laugh-filled season of your happy white sitcom family life.”

“I’m broke, Tyranno.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m so broke my kids ought to pay me an allowance.”

“Best quit your playin’ before the price goes up to one fifty.” Pronouncing the last like fitty.

“Might as well ask for a million, Tyranno. I don’t have it.”

“You take me for a fool, Lawyer Ricky Galeer? How much you charge an hour?”

“An attorney’s hourly rate is scarcely a reliable indicator of his net income, let alone his net worth. There are countervailing considerations like overhead, debt service, insurance—”

“How much?”

“A hundred-eighty an hour.”

“Sheeit!”

“But half the time I can’t collect it.”

“So it works out to ninety an hour, then? And you claimin’ you broke?”

“Don’t forget I have a wife and four kids at home.”

“I ain’t forgettin’. It’s why I’m countin’ on your prompt and courteous payment.”

“You need to give this up for a bad job, Tyranno. Drop it and move on. I’m a dry hole.”

“You a ho, thass a fact. Just not the dry kind. You ever hear of the hundred thousand dollar fear pyramid?”

“Can’t say as I have, no.”

“They’s this hundred thousand dollar pyramid of seven fears all human beings share, did you know that, you bein’ a lawyer and all?”

“What’s my being a lawyer have to do with it?”

Ignoring me, he went on. “Death’s at the base, of course, the big D. Death and damnation. Then comes pain, paralysis, blindness, hunger, loneliness. Want to take a wild guess what’s at the very top of the fear pyramid?”

“Give me a hint.”

“Begins with a D.”

“I don’t know. Dandruff?”

“You a funny muthafucka. Here’s the answer: disgrace. Otherwise known as humiliation, degradation, and embarrassment. Humanity’s highest fear.”

“Imagine that.”

“You ever spend time out at the local zoological park, Mistah Lawyer Ricky Galeer? Watchin’ the animals while they be watchin’ you?”

“Now and then. Why?”

“As a zoology aficionado, you may find this particularly interesting: they say some of your higher mammals—a bear, for instance, or a elephant—can literally die of embarrassment. You ever hear that?”

“I’m no bear, Tyranno.”

“You hung like a elephant, I’ll give you that. Not a African elephant, though—a white elephant, know what I’m sayin’? What everybody in your world be sayin’ once I post a certain video online: that Lawyer Ricky, man, he be hung like a white elephant. You be world-famous overnight, David Letterman and them other white boys all steady crackin’ jokes about you.”

I tried a risky gambit. “How do you know I’m not recording this conversation?”

Long pause. Then Tyranno responded, barely above a whisper, “I know you not that much of a fool.”

“Didn’t Drey tell you? The cops played the message you left on my answering machine. They’re already on to you, Tyranno.”

“You better make it your business to get them offa me, then.”

“What if I can’t?”

“’Cause if I go down, Mistah Lawyer,” Tyranno said, “next thing everybody see soon’s they boot up they computers gonna be you butt-fuckin’ a dirtyleg. You fittin’ to be every fool’s ass-humpin’ screen saver.” The line went dead.

A thought occurred to my buzzed brain. There had been no call waiting interruptions in all the time I had talked to Tyranno. Diane had never called again. That could mean only one thing: she must be on her way over.

I returned to find Drey and Snug stark naked, circling one another like Greco-Roman grapplers checking each other out. Drey’s assessment of Snug’s equine anatomical attributes had been correct.

“This ol’ boy’s got one monster horse cock on him, I tell you what,” Drey cooed.

“He does indeed,” I agreed. Snug rolled his eyes, acknowledging the compliment. And just as Heart had said, he really did have the words What God Hath Wrought Let No Man Put Asunder tattooed in inch-high German gothic purple letters across his fish-belly white abdomen. Must have been a while since Snug went sunbathing.

“Have another drink, Ricky,” Drey said. “You’re fallin’ behind.”

“Diane may be on her way over here, mad as hell. You hung up on her, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“The more the merrier,” Drew retorted. “I ain’t above a little lesbo exhibition match to get the juices flowin’, so to speak. They tell me I’m versatile, even though I really prefer dick to pussy, to be quite frank.”

“You’re drunk,” Snug told her.

“So what if I am, Harold? Seems to me you ain’t got no more right to complain than his wife does, what with you prancin’ around here naked as a jay bird, tryin’ hard to get ya a little.”

“Everybody calm down and get your clothes on,” I warned. “I’m telling you, if I know Diane she’s heading over here right about now, spitting mad. I’ll go out front again and lock the door this time. Thank God she doesn’t have a key to the place. Don’t need any more unexpected guests.”

“The male cock is such an interesting organ,” Drey taunted, drawing the word out to four lingering syllables as she reached for Snug’s. I took the opportunity to hurry back to the outer office. Good thing I had remembered to shut out the lights to the reception area. Now I relied on the open door to my lit inner office to guide my way. I had no sooner turned the deadbolt latch when I saw the reflection of headlights on the building opposite. Headlights a block away, turning down the narrow side street to the office.

There was virtually no traffic on that inconvenient one-way street after business hours. With a start, I realized it must be Diane rounding the corner in her clunker delivery truck, speeding here to check up on me. I sprinted back into my office. Running with a hard-on is an interesting experience in its own right, although I don’t recommend it. I slammed the door and killed the lights in there, too. Drey yelled, “Hey! What the shit?”

I shushed her. “Diane’s outside,” I whispered. “Keep quiet and maybe she’ll go away.”

Nothing I could do about our Astro still parked in front. We waited in the darkness listening to the sounds of one another’s breathing. The LCD on the digital clock gave the only light. After a few moments, I heard the two of them moving around. A shadow passed between me and the red numbers showing the time: nine eleven.

Furtive fingertips brushed the very tip of my penis, found purchase there and gently stroked the shaft of my cock as though to reassure me. I did nothing to push those fingers away but listened intently for the front door. A moment later, I heard someone pull the handle once, then again, yanking harder this time. As though in response, Drey yanked harder. At the front door, persistent knocking followed, knocking that seemed interminable, and still the superb hand job continued. There would be hell to pay at home. I might as well disappear until I was sober enough to think up a good enough story.

I was reflecting on how there is something about a secret hand job from a strange woman that makes it extra-special if one’s wife is close by when I heard the key rattle in the back door, the lock turn and the door scrape open. Footsteps moved past the bathroom and down the hallway, approaching. The beam of a powerful flashlight swept the room, caught Snug’s hand on my cock and stayed there.

A familiar voice said, “I guess it’s true what they say: a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime.” Lieutenant Grimm flipped on the lights and leered at the three of us posed like nude statuary.

BIO: Malachi Stone, hard-hitting attorney by day, prolific novelist by night. Check out his website INTERMINABLE CONVERSATIONS WITH A SILENT MAN for other stories and more.