Spring, 1938

Hello again, so soon!

For many weeks, I’ve focused a lot on After the Funeral because it is my current piece of work. Thank you for your encouragement and excitement. I’ve been as excited as you all have to see what exactly happens in the end! I’ve really come to appreciate Darrel more than I initially thought I would appreciate a quickly-decomposing albeit hungry zombie with a rather sick sense of humor. I wonder what he is hungry for?

The very first item I posted on this forum was an excerpt from a novel I began (but did not finish… yet) for the 2009 Nanowrimo challenge. The National Novel Writing Month challenge is to write 50,000 words beginning November 1 and ending November 30. I met my goal for 2009, and I think the story started off pretty good. In particular, the second of the three chapters I finished (and one I started) brought to light a character by the name of Nicolette Palmer that I found intriguing. (Lizzy, remember she’s not real, hon) Nicolette Palmer was introduced to us in quite a compromising position, but throughout her life, she handled herself with considerable grace, given the circumstances of her existence.

I want to share with you the sympathy and compassion I’ve come to feel for Nicolette, and let you come to find it as well. In the lines below, I’ve posted the rest of Part 1 and all of Part 2 of the nine sections that comprise a chapter called Spring, 1938 in my as-yet-unfinished novel Falls the Shadow. Everything here is very first draft, no editing has been done; it is the raw output of one month of non-stop proliferation. But I see potential, and I’d like to hear back from you, Dear Reader; I’d like to know what you think.

Before you continue, read the first post so you know what’s going on. Oh, yeah, and if you don’t like the words “penis” or “bondage” you may want to wait for next week…

Enjoy!

———

1

…(continued from a previous post)…

The grass is green and fragrant, and the little girl in the white spring dress giggles as a dandelion explodes on her nose when she bends to smell it. She lifts her hands up and her fingers brush the tip of her nose. She turns to look at her family.

Father is standing a ways behind her, snapping pictures on his new Nikon camera, Mother stands near him, stands behind the wheelchair in which her brother sits. David smiles in a despondent manner, as if he thinks that the flower meant to do that thing exactly. He grunts, and points at Nicolette with one hand, and reaches the other backward to tap against Mother’s arm. She pushes the chair forward, but only a little.

“This is as far as we go David, otherwise we’ll be in the pictures.”

David contorts his neck, and turns his head toward his mother for a moment, then straightens up. He looks toward his father, grunts again. He points at the camera, then points at himself, then looks back at mother in that same uncomfortable-looking way.

“No, David, your father is taking pictures of Nicolette.”

David settles down for a moment, but his breathing has become ragged, deep, thrusting his chest out and sucking it back in, as if it were going to implode. He begins to utter small vocalizations in tempo with his breath, and steadily, they increase in volume.

“Hush, David. This is your sister’s time. Please calm down,” mother says.

David does nothing of the sort, but only continues to send his voice out, continues to force his limited vocal chords to make the sound more ominous, more voluminous, more grating to the ear, particularly to Mother’s ear.

Father snaps around on his heal and shouts at him. “David, you hush up now, boy.”

Again, David doesn’t.

And so Father hits him three times, once on the head, just above the left eye, once directly across the face, and once on the left shoulder.

“Gerald!” Mother cries out. She pulls the chair backward, away from Father. Just a smidgeon, not so far as to anger Father even more.

David hushes up, as Father told him to.

Nicolette continues to play in the dandelions, as if nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.

———

Neal sat back in the chair, still naked, drying his hair with a towel from the small bathroom. Embroidered on it were the initials “HPH”, the center one much larger than the other.

Niki (sweet Niki, he thought, a hell of a lay) was still tied up on the bed, ass pointed in the air, and legs now totally numb. Neal had taken the initiative to tie her knees together, around her arms, before getting in the shower. Don’t go anywhere now, he had said and laughed. He felt bad about the laugh, now that he’d had some time to reflect on it. Perhaps it was a bit… overdone.

“Well?” Niki said. She saw he still wore the mask over his face and wondered if he had showered with the thing on. The feathers were still perfectly postured, so she assumed not.

Neal sat there for a full minute, and draped the towel over his right thigh.

“Well what?” Neal said.

“Well, are you gonna let me out of here, you crazy shit, or what?”

“You know, ladies shouldn’t curse like that. It’s unbecoming.”

“Yeah, they shouldn’t fuck you til you fall over, either, honey, so get me out of this.”

“No.”

“No? No? What in the righteous hell do you mean ‘no’?”

Neal stopped listening to her words. He heard her mouth spilling out useless noise – “let me go,” “untie me, you big galoot,” things like that – but he wasn’t hearing any meaning from them. He walked over to the bed, and worked his wet towel under her head, wadded it up against her mouth, and tied it near and just behind her ear. Now, the words were muffled, blurred together, and really carried no meaning, other than the implied “help me” that most folks speak through a gag.

He scratched his balls while he stood next to the bed, right in front of her face, where she could get a good look.

He went back to the chair and sat down. Niki continued to scream obscenities and God only knows what else from behind the terrycloth gag for about five minutes before quieting down.

Neal went to the closet, fumbled through his pants, and came back to the bed carrying a stack of hundred dollar bills in his hand. He set it on the nightstand, and stood right there by the left side of the bed, where the only thing she could see was his cock, swinging, or twitching, or hanging still, where the only thing she could see was the pure man-ness of him. He grabbed his cock and pointed it to the stack of money. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of four thousand dollars, but who keeps tabs on that kind of petty shit. He saw her eyes turn as far as they could go, look as far as her gag and bindings would let her, and she nodded her head.

“That’s better,” Neal said.

He removed the gag, and she spouted off again with her silly expletive name-calling. He slapped her, this time on the face, harder than he had before, and she shut up quickly.

He placed his penis on the bed again, and pushed it forward again, and bumped her nose again, and fucked her face again.

This time, she was made to choke and gag, was made to nearly suffocate, and she was really, truly terrified that she might die with this shitty man’s dick in her throat. She cried, but Neal didn’t notice because of the choking-tears that had already moistened her cheeks.

2

David Palmer walked out of the Palmer & Sanford office building on the corner of 50th and Lexington and straightened his sports coat and the cuffs of his shirt. He headed out along 50th to Park Avenue, looking for a bit of fun for the evening. He had been up to his father’s firm to do a little bit of research for school, sort of. Really, he went to get the paperwork signed saying that he had done the research, when indeed he had done nothing more than fuck off all day and flirt with the secretaries. Ridiculously out-dated tramps, all of them. He had even gone so far as to lure one of the cougars – a married one, at that – into the back storage area of the typists’ offices, and tried to have a quickie, but the tramp had changed her mind after a short round of ninth-grade-style, over-the-clothes heavy petting. He played it cool, of course, but was ultimately disappointed at not getting to knock her boots around and make her squeal. At least her tits had been fair-to-midland.

And now, he was on to fresher pastures, and Park was an easy place to find a lay. At least, it’s easy if your the handsome, twenty-two-year-old son of a rich lawyer.

He turned south on Park Avenue, and walked about three blocks south to a place called Tom’s Shoes that was a hole-in-the-wall cobbler’s shop that housed a makeshift brewery. It was a hole-in-the-wall if ever there was. In the back, it was too dark, too smokey, too loud, and, all in all, the perfect little place to pick up a piece of ass.

He greeted Tom — “You’re early, aren’t you?” “Busy night, I’m hoping” — and walked into the back room of the shop without slowing down. When he opened the door to the speakeasy, the only thing he could really see clearly was the light from the barback racks where the liquor sat. The smoke hung thick, but not as thick as it usually did, since there were only three people in the whole place: the bartender, and two gentlemen at the bar.

David walked himself up and ordered a whiskey, neat, and sat down.

“Here you go, fellow,” said the bartender.

“Thanks a million, Joe,” said David.

“The name’s Barry, not Joe. I don’t know who that Joe fellow is.”

“Not to worry. I don’t know him either.”

The bartender and his customer shared a laugh and then sat in comfortable silence, each letting life wash away, one tick-tock at a time.

One of the other men spoke up.

“What are you in for, sonny?” He was old, his hair shimmered white in the low light.

“A song and a prayer, mostly. Maybe a little tail later,” David said.

The old codger laughed airily.

“Ain’t no tail here, son. I suggest you keep it in your pants til, oh, about nine-thirty. Tail will start to roll in then, I imagine.”

“I guess there’s nothing better to do now except drink, then, hey old timer?”

The man’s rasping laugh filled the space between them again. It was sweet with whiskey, dry with gin. It reeked of old age.

“Sure thing, young man. Just watch out for the wild ones, all right?”

“Yes sir, I will,” David said, and swigged the last few sloshes of bourbon from his glass.

“Hey, Barry, can I get another?” David held his glass up. “And one for each of these fellows, too?”

“Coming right up,” Barry said.

As time went by, the dark accumulated like haze in a drunkard’s vision, and David Palmer continued to sit at the bar with the two old men, bantering about women and hearing them tell their epic battle stories. As the time droned on, other peope began filling the seats in around the bar, and at the tables. The men began to hear the click of billiard balls jouncing against each other, the thump of them knocking against felt rails and the clang as they fell into pockets.

David looked up, looked around.

“I’ll be damned, oldtimers,” he said. “It seems we have drawn a crowd. I’d best be off on the hunt.”

“Just don’t get your own goat, son, you know what I mean?”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be just fine.” As these last words rolled off his tongue — his whiskey glass poised, ready to be drained, about three inches from his mouth — he saw her stroll in, saw her sultry gait, the way her hips swung and swirled smoky trails through the crowd, saw the slight bob and dip of her breasts with each step, and saw her swath of red hair, her deep, earthen eyes, deep like wells, so deep you could fall right in and get lost forever.

“I’ll be just fine,” he said again.

Now, he raised the vessel to his lips and sucked the last remaining tendrils of whiskey into his mouth. The last drop always has the best burn.

He lightly slammed the glass onto the bar top, ad gave the two old guys a final glance, then straightened his collar and strode away.

She moved in a liquid way around the room, almost like she was playing hostess, or serving drinks. She obviously wasn’t doing the latter, though, because she’d actually accept a drink from one of the people o occasion, and drink it down before moving to the next group.

David wound around and found his way in front of her. Well, in front of the direction she had generally been proceeding, but he was foiled in his attempt to have her run into him. So he went for the direct approach, and walked right up to her. She was looking back, saying au revoir to another group of socialites, and nearly ran into him when she turned around. She gasped, raised her drink — it was a martini, this time. Extra dry, extra olives, from the look of it — swiftly, removing it from harm’s way. David played it off as if he had been standing there the whole time, and had simply not seen her. He grabbed her hand to help steady her drink. Not until that spirit was safe did either of them speak.

“Hello, there,” David said.

She smiled.

“Hello,” said the redheaded beauty, without any sort of pretense other than to indicate that she intended to do nothing this evening but have fun.

“I’m glad you didn’t spill your drink.”

“Oh, you are, are you?”

“Of course, then I’d have to buy you a freshener.”

She considered this, then stretched her left arm out and slowly poured what remained of her martini on the floor of the Whiskey Blue.

“Whoops.” She raised a hand to her mouth and handed David the stemware. “I wonder where I can find a man to buy me a drink?”

David looked to his right, and tapped a large, white-haired man on the shoulder. The man turned around, genial to say the least, and, after looking David up and down to see who he was, said, “Yes, young man?”

“I’m sorry to bother you sir, but this young lady seems to be without a drink. Would you mind?” David gestured with the empty glass, and leveled his hand to indicate that the woman was, indeed, without a beverage.

“Well, goodness me, young man, but I’d love to buy a drink for a beautiful woman. I’d do it any day in fact.”

At this, a woman who was presumably the white-haired gentleman’s wife turned and glared at him. He proceeded to flag the waiter and order for the lady. The waiter came back with a martini put together in much the same fashion as the previous: extra olives, extra dirty.

She walked over to the old man, put her arms around his should — careful, of course, not to spill her newly freshened drink — and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“Thanks, Martin. You’re a doll.”

“Oh, don’t mention it, sweetheart. Go on and have fun.”

“Thanks, bye-bye.”

David’s jaw dropped as the redheaded woman strolled off into the crowd. Of course, before she could get too far out of sight, he rushed after her, and caught her in an even darker corner of the already sultry room.

“You just don’t give up, do you, tiger?” she asked, grabbing his collar, straightening his tie, then looking up into his eyes.

“Nope, never,” David replied.

“I guess we ought to get out of here, then.”

“Sure thing, doll. But first, what’s your name?”

“Darla.”

And with that, Darla turned and walked out the door without waiting for David to even think about arranging his exit.

———

Nicolette saw the rooster tail of dust long before she saw the car that made it, and more time passed, more distance closed, before she saw who was driving the fancy machine. When she saw the silly goggles he wore to keep the dust out of his eyes, she laughed. When she saw the girl with the red hair flowing out behind her in the breeze, she scowled. When they pulled into the driveway, she was indifferent.

David stepped out of the car, and walked around the back. He’s straight as an arrow, she thought, fit as a fiddle, as cliché as they come, down in good old New York City.

Several years ago, Doc Hudson from St. Cloud told Father that David had polio. He was wrong, of course, but David had shown several similar symptoms, so it is certainly understandable how a nice, old country-doctor could get confused about such a thing. But so it was, David did have trouble walking, and he did have chicken-legs, and he did tire easily. So it had been natural for Mother and Father to stick him in a wheel chair all those years ago and push him around town like some sort of science exhibit.

About a year after the diagnosis — which at the time was not yet a misdiagnosis — Mother and Father decided to part ways, and split the living arrangements. Father and David went to live in New York City, where Father worked for a modest-but-growing law firm, and David went to all the best hospitals. Mother and Nicolette stayed in Sauk Centre because, of course, New York City was no fit place to raise a girl and all that rigamarole.

She had never really been close to David, but she always felt a certain fond affection for him because he was her brother, and a certain pity for him, because the letters she had received from him regularly over the years told her that he was so scared to be imperfect, scared that the slightest failure would mean total and utter ruination, and he couldn’t have that. No one deserves that, he had said. Nicolette wasn’t exactly sure what “that” was, but she didn’t press the matter.

But now here he was, standing in her driveway, looking like a perfect gentleman on the outside; there was no reason to look to the inside for now.

David had come to visit the summer home for a few weeks to introduce Darla to Mother. Nicolette had already heard all about her — in his last letter, David had given her every savagely erotic detail of how they met, and had asked her not to say anything about her to Mother just yet — and didn’t care for the redhead at all. And now, she had a physical manifestation, an object to lay the disappointment on, because her brother’s letters were becoming increasingly more infrequent, becoming shorter, more distant, and Nicolette was losing the brother that she loved and new more intimately than any other being to some hussy, some petty tramp, from the city.

She forced a smile up onto the corners of her lip, and raised her hand to wave.

“David! Oh, it’s good to see you, brother!” Nicolette said as David and Darla climbed the stairs. She gave him a brief hug and a swift kiss on the corner of his mouth as he reached the top step. She gave a glance at Darla the Red, but the latter was looking out into the distance over the classic beauty of the southwestern Minnesota horizon.

“Hello, sis! My, it’s good to see you too,” David said. He pulled back a little bit, surprised from the kiss, she supposed. It was expected, of course. She was a woman — not a girl — that he hardly knew, and here she was, kissing him in front of his dear, sweet Darla. Nicolette almost wasn’t able to keep the snarl off her face. “I want to introduce you to someone. Darla, come on over here.”

And Darla did.

Darla probably always did, Nicolette though. Always does what little David wants. Only he wasn’t little David anymore, he was a man now, and she was a woman.

“Nicolette, this is Darla,” David said.

Strange, Nicolette thought. He didn’t introduce her as his fianceé.

“Pleasure,” she responded curtly.

“Darla, this is my sister, Nicolette.”

“I’ve heard so much about you, Niki,” Darla said. She extended her hand, and for a slender moment, it hung in the air. She faltered a bit, but before she was able to retract the gesture, Nicolette reached and took Darla’s hand, gave it a good shake.

“It’s Nicolette, dear.” She squeezed Darla’s hand a little more than was necessary. More even than was proper, heaven forbid, but it felt good to do it. She imagined squeezing Darla’s hand so hard that the poor bitch buckled to her knees. But this was only a fantasy, and it had no place or business coming true.

Nicolette dropped Darla’s hand as swiftly as she had grabbed it, glanced at David with cold eyes, and turned in a flutter to head into the house. “Mother, David’s here,” she called into the house. “And he’s got a surprise for you.”

She whirled around and saw David shoot a nervous glance her way. She smiled, shrugged her shoulders, finished her turn, and walked inside.

David and Darla followed, and they all took up station in the kitchen.

“Would you like a glass of water, dear?” he asked.

She slinked over to him and put her arms around his neck.

“No, that’s not what I’d like,” she said, looking hungrily at his lips, then moving her gaze up to his eyes and back again. She stole a quick kiss.

Nicolette saw that David was looking at her, that his eyes bore great distress. She raised her eyebrows to say what should I do about it, little brother? and turned away from the two lovebirds — mostly away. She kept her peripheral vision finely tuned to their movements, and he saw David push away, grab her shoulders. There was a smacking sound as he broke free.

“Darla!” David voice was sharp, but quiet. He gave a rasping whisper. “Not yet, I have to tell Mother!”

She wrestled free of him and crossed her arms.

“Sometimes you’re such a pansy, David. Grow a pair,” Darla said. She sighed heavily as she walked to the table and sat down.

Nicolette chose this moment to glance over her shoulder. She looked her brother up and down, a silky smile brightening her face. Her cheeks flushed.

He certainly has, she thought.

Nicolette’s stare was broken when her mother brushed a hand against her back as she walked into the kitchen.

“David!” She strode to him and took him in her arms, the prodigal son returned to a mother whom he hadn’t seen in more than twenty years. “Oh, my son, you’ve grown! And you’re so handsome!”

“Well, Mother, you didn’t really think I’d stay six and feeble forever did you?”

“A mother can hope, can’t she?” Mother looked over at Darla, and Nicolette could swear she saw bolts of lightening emit from her eyes. “And who is this beautiful, young lady, David? And what is this news that Nicolette keeps shouting about?”

“Mother, this is — ” a brief pause, his sister noticed, and a little flutter when the next words finally came — “my fianceé, Darla.” Davd said all of this in such undramatic fashion that Nicolette thought it may have been Darla’s turn to flash lightning from her eyes. For the briefest of moments, she felt pity for Darla. She squashed that emotion flat, however, and laughed inside.

Darla took her cue, stood, and walked around the table to where Mother and David were standing.

“Mrs. Palmer, I’m so glad to finally meet you. David has told me so much — ”

Mother broke in.

“He can’t have told you too much, dear. He was six when he and his father moved to the city. He and I have as much catching up to do as you and I have of getting to know each other.” Mother smiled gracefully.

Darla tried to hide the shocked look that overtook her face.

“Well, all that aside, now.” Mother waved her arms, and turned to walk toward the cupboard. “Who’s for drinks?”

Darla shot a look at David, and he shushed her.

Mother pulled four glasses from the cupboard, then went to the pantry for a bottle of gin — unlabeled, of course, but Mother never drank anything else. She set these on the table, returned to the kitchen proper, and came back again with a pitcher of “iced tea” which was really nothing more than home-brewed bourbon whiskey.

“I’ll have a whiskey, Mother,” said David. Mother poured two gins and one whiskey. “Darla, what’ll you have?”

“Oh, I don’t think I — ”

“Nonsense, dear.” Mother cut her off for the second time; she was on a roll. “Have a gin. It’s the smoothest, you know.” She poured gin into the last glass, and we all sat down together. David looked like he would pass out at any moment from nerves. Darla looked like a wild animal caught in the single eye of a train.

Mother took a drink, then simply sat, her arms crossed on the table, and looked at David. There was silence for about five seconds before anyone spoke.

“Well?” said Mother.

“Well what?” David asked.

“Spill it. I want to hear how you two met.”

The color drained from Darla’s face. Nicolette put her fist to her mouth, fighting ear and nose to stifle the laugh that was clawing at her insides liked a caged wolverine, but she sat silently, politely, letting the magic work itself.

David stuttered over his words — about twenty-three of them, from the sound of it — before he was finally able to speak.

“Oh, Mother, there will be time enough for that later. I’d like to hear how things have been here in the old world. How is the hotel business? Nicolette — ” David turned to look at her — “tell me how you’ve been.”

“You’re stalling, dear,” Mother said.

David shifted uncomfortably and looked to Nicolette, but she only took another drink and smiled. His brow was furrowed, his mouth agape.

“What is it, dear? You act like you had just been caught with a prostitute!”

Nicolette finally burst out laughing she couldn’t hold it in any longer. David put his hands over his face and sunk as far as he possibly could into the chair. Through the tears that were beginning to well in the corners of her eyes, Nicolette looked at Darla, and saw that her face was even more red than her beautiful, auburn mane.

“Mother, she was only a prostitute on the night I met her.”

“David!” Darla yelled at him, and the scarlett shade of her face deepened even more.

“After that,” David continued, “I spoke with her, uh, employer, and we came to an arrangement.”

Mother’s face was stone, and her lips were a compressed line of white against her face.

“We had a wonderful night together, and that morning at breakfast we discussed the idea of marriage.”

“Was this before, or after you paid her, David?” Mother asked. She turned her dark, solid eyes toward Darla, who raised a hand and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“After. But –”

“David!” Darla yelled again, and threw an enraged look toward him.

“But that’s neither here nor there. I love Darla, Mother, and we’re to  be wed. Next April, and I’d like for you to come to the city to see it.”

Mother tossed back the last of her gin, and set the glass gently on the table. She looked back toward David, then back at Darla, and then stood and left the kitchen.

David looked at Nicolette.

“Before you even start speaking,” she said, “just remember that I told you this would happen.”

“I… you… How could she…”

David fell silent, just sat there, staring at nothing, thinking of nobody but Mother, and completely ignoring his bride-to-be. After several minutes had passed in silence, Darla stood.

“Your mother called me a whore and you couldn’t find the common decency to come to my defense?” Her voice was flat, toneless. Such a contrast to her otherworldly beauty could not be fathomed. “Take me home, David. Take me back to New York. The wedding is off.”

She left, presumably, Nicolette supposed, to wait in the car. David followed his Judas sheep to the slaughter, his head hung low and his arms dangling like a hanged man’s legs.

Nicolette walked outside after him, and stood on the porch. She frowned, uncertain, not really hurt so much as disappointed. She really thought that David would not go back with her, that he would stay, and that they, she and the man she loved, could become close again, as brother and sister, or as man and woman, the way they were in their childhood. Now that would never happen. She turned, and began to walk back toward the house.

Nicolette looked back when she got to the door, and saw David driving away in his brand new Willys Overland. Its luster was flat and it looked haggard and used up, just like it’s driver.

Several tears rolled down her cheek, and splashed against her breast.

———

Darla wondered what his face looked like, but she concentrated on exactly what was being portrayed by her behind on the way out of the club. She continued her way through Tom’s, and took a left on the sidewalk. She sneaked a glance back and didn’t see the silly, good-looking boy anywhere. Well, at least I get to have a little more fun with him, she thought.

She walked exactly one block, and ducked into the entranceway of the Sutterfield Apartments to have a smoke and see how long it would take him to hunt her down. It didn’t take him long, either. She heard him down the block, shouting her name, before she was able to get a cigarette out of her purse.

“Hey, big boy,” she said.

“Hi,” David said,  little flustered.

Darla reached up and straightened his tie again, then wrapped herself around his arm and said, “I think you ought to show me your place.”

“I suppose I ought to.” His grin was devilish, but certainly not the worst she had seen. “Should we flag a cab?”

“How far is it to your abode?”

“Not far. I live in Union City, so we have to cross the river, but we could walk for a while if you’d like.”

“I’d like that a lot,” Darla said. “But first, what’s your name? I suppose I — ”

“David,” he said. He was excited to say it; he just blurted it right out.

“All right, David. Let’s take a walk, shall we?”

“I think that would be splendid.”

The moon shone down on Park Avenue as an afterthought to the street lamps and building marquise. Only a handful of stars twinkled in the night sky, and the couple walked hand in hand. Once they reached 39th, David walked to the edge of the street and raised his hand. He blew a stout whistle and shouted “Taxi!” But there seemed to be — for once since the first Yellow rolled off the line — a lack of taxis in New York City. David and Darla shared a good laugh about this, as all New Yorkers will, then grumbled their frustrations, as all New Yorkers do. They began to walk down 39th and found themselves lost in conversation, longing in the night to be together, and decided to stay in Manhattan for the evening.

The Bryan Park Hotel off the corner of 9th and 39th had one available room that evening: the honeymoon suite.

“We’ll take it,” David said, and then shot a glance at Darla and fluttered his eyebrows. Darla gave a coy smile, and only just managed to look a little embarassed at this. God knows she had done all this before with plenty of other men, but she was actually enjoying herself with David. He had caught her totally off guard, had given her exactly what she needed: a good man to show her what she was missing in life.

In fact, the embarrassed look she had managed was really genuine; she was embarrassed, but not by the silliness David played off to the young man behind the concierge desk. She was embarrassed because at some point David would need to know that she was an everyman’s fantasy that he just couldn’t take any farther than tonight. But he had been so sweet to her, so charming. How could she simply let him crash like that?

Darla knew what she had to do, and she would certainly do her duty. She would fuck him, take his cash, and leave him there, rolling around the roiled bed in his own sweat and jism. She would leave with his stink — his beautiful, fragrant, manly aroma — still on her, and she would disappear. He only knew her name, anyway. Nothing else beyond that.

What harm could it do?

Now, she heard that David was speaking to her, felt his hand brush against her shoulder, and realized that she had been off in her own little corner of the world, but that the rest had gone on without her. She pulled herself back to current, and heard David’s words.

“Are you ready, honey?” David asked.

Honey? She wasn’t sure about that, felt too formal, too… committed.

“What? Oh, of course! Of course, I’m ready. Let’s go up,” Darla said.

When they arrived in room 327 of the Bryan Park, Darla threw her purse on the lace-entangled bed, kicked her shoes off, and sprawled out under the canopy, ready to go ahead with the action. Her mind had been throbbing over this part of the evening since she saw David catching up to her outside the Whiskey Blue.

But now, it seemed like he didn’t get it, or wasn’t interested.

David sat across the room, and marveled at the decor. After a moment, he relaxed against the couch, and spread his arms across the back of it.

Darla looked at him, looked at those eyes that were now fixated on her, looked at the small dimple in his left cheek, the cheshire-cat smile that slid down from it. She sat up on the bed, and let her wrap fall behind her. With her hands folded in her lap, she looked directly at David for a moment, just sat and watched him sitting there, so innocent and trustworthy. He hadn’t made a single move tonight since the escapade in the Whiskey Blue, and she had really enjoyed her time with him so far.

She stood, and crossed the distance between bed and couch, and as she did so, pulled the string that tied the dress around her neck and let the whole thing slide over her skin and fall to the ground around her. She stopped just in front of him.

His smile parted to show his beautiful, perfect teeth.

Darla parted his knees and knelt between his legs.

“So, what do you think, big boy?”

“I think you may have been around the block a time or two.”

She unzipped his pants.

“Haven’t we all, here on the edge of high society in the Big Apple?”

“No, not all of us.” His smile faded.

“Don’t worry, David,” Darla said. “I’ll be gentle.”

And she was gentle, and they were gentle, and several times that night the gentle touch became a lover’s embrace, became an electric shock, became a climax to top the Roof of the World, then melded down into an innocent and gentle touch before escalating, rising again, and when it was over David knew that this was love, that he had found the end-all-be-all of his life, the reception to his creation, his match.

But she would also be the dark to his light, someday.

———

…continued…