"Hey... where a' fu' are you? I'm come by Frida' night... um... wif twins, MAN! Fu'ing twins..." BEEP! The mechanical voice from my answering machine filled in the details. "Monday... three... twenty... five... AM."
I had turned off the ringer on my phone and let the machine take all my calls since I had started on my 'triumphant' book promotion. I was an overnight sensation after eleven years of cranking out ad copy, working celebrity scandal rags, writing pseudo-famous people's biographies and sucking up every inane copy gig that had filtered through the well-known book-of-the-month hack writers.
The calls from my longtime friends had been intermixed with those requesting my presence at some benefit, like the underprivileged inner-city felines foundation and the obligatory interviews from journalism students at the local community college.
My agent was pissed with me. I had appeared on a highly rated late night television show wearing jeans, a long underwear shirt, canvas tennis shoes and a Pendleton shirt tied around my waist. After the show aired she called my hotel room and screamed into the phone.
"Who the fuck do you think you are, Kurt Cobain?"
"What are you talkin' about?"
"Jesus Christ, Sammy. You are a serious author now, not some teenage anathema!"
"I thought the interview went well."
"You asshole! You showed up on national TV looking like some refuge from a 'Lollapalooza' concert!"
"Molly, I got to the gig with ten minutes to spare, okay? Somebody with curly hair tried to get on the plane at the last minute. The airport Nazis held up the flight for an hour while they took her off and punched her in kidneys until she pissed blood. Then they had to pile her back onto the plane so the rest of us could see how our tax dollars are being spent."
"Why didn't wear something more appropriate when you got on the plane?"
"Hey, that
is
appropriate dress for the Northwest. We dress to the weather not to some image."
There was a pause and her mood softened somewhat. "That's a good line. Try to work into your next book."
"Whatever, we'll talk when I get back home."
"Yes, we
need
to talk."
After that, I hung up and asked the desk clerk to take messages for the rest of the night. I was too wound up to sleep so I decided to take a walk. New York City is the greatest place in the world if you've got a case of insomnia. By foot or by cab I saw the brightest lights on Manhattan Island, that night. As the sun rose out of the Atlantic Ocean, with a slow motion orange dolphin's leap that ended in the Pacific, I felt the itch to get home.
I told the cabby to take me to the airport.
"Which one?" he asked.
"The one that has the big airplanes." I snapped. I had seen enough of the sights. I longed for the gray horizons of the Northwest and I was lashing out at everybody.
My flight was scheduled for the afternoon but I wanted to go home, now. I approached the desk and asked if I could get onto an earlier flight. The girl behind the counter took a long hard look at me.
"You want to go space available and you have no baggage, is that right?"
"Yeah." I nodded. Then I added, "You're not gonna beat the bottoms of my feet with broom handles because of that, are you?"
"Sir?"
"I saw somebody's grandma got roughed up in Seattle yesterday because she 'looked suspicious' and changed her departure time."
The clerk was not amused. I could sense her finger poised above some red button behind the counter that would hose me down with mace so the airport goons could kick me repeatedly in the testicles.
Suddenly, her eyes lit up.
"Did I see you on TV last night?"
"Yeah, I did an interview on..." She didn't let me finish.
"Oh my goodness. I've heard so much about your new book. Sure, I can get you on the next flight out." She stared at her screen while she tickled the keyboard. "It leaves in thirty minutes. I'll have 'em hold it for ya."
"Thanks," I nodded distractedly. Everybody wanted to be my friend now that I was known.
She looked both ways down the counter to the other early-morning employees and leaned forward. In a conspiratorial tone she asked if she could have an autograph as she pulled a Post-It from under the counter. I scribbled my name and under that I wrote "Buy my book."
Once on board the plane I called on the airplane's cell phone to my hotel and asked them to send my overnight bag and my messages to Seattle.
"Would you like me to read your messages, sir?"
"Are you outta your fuckin' mind? This line costs me like twenty dollars a minute, dumb ass. Just fax 'em or something."
"Yes sir," was his curt response.
"I'm sorry." I sighed aloud. "That's not what I meant to say. Please, just mail them or..."
"Yes sir." The phone went dead in my hands.
Damn! What was I becoming: one of the shit heels I hated when I was struggling? I simply couldn't get used to people treating me like a celebrity when inside I didn't
feel
any different. It was easier to respond to people when I was 'one of the herd' instead of a
de novo
VIP. The recognition got me a last minute flight but I didn't feel any different. People just treated me different and I hated that. I was definitely going through celebrity diabetes: the sweetness of success felt wonderful on the palate but the 'dizzy spins' the morning after still terrified me. I ordered several drinks, closed my eyes and leaned back in my seat.
Molly was waiting at the "Arrival Parking" turnaround when I stepped out of the airport terminal. The overcast skies were a welcome sight. As my flight raced the sun across the sky to the Pacific Ocean we lost about hour in the contest but the Seattle gray tones overhead rarely cede the hour. It was always 'quarter to drizzle' here. It was reassuring to know what the weather was going to be most days. In that respect, Seattle was like LA but without the skin cancer.
Arriving at my house, Molly disappeared as I checked my phone messages. She hated the people I hung out with and thought they were crass, deluded hillbillies who were using me to get women and stay high. I found that ironic because those same people were the ones who graced the pages of my latest book: the only one to make the "Times Best Seller" list.
Before I left for New York she told me, "You are an important writer now. Get some friends that reflect your new position in the literary community."
"Great, I'll hang with a buncha 'wienie smokers' who write love poems about their boyfriend's asshole," I blurted out. We hadn't spoke about it since.
I shuffled down the hall. As I turned the corner into the living room I spotted Molly spread over the arm of the couch; her clothes in pile, feet on the floor, with her face buried in the cushions, offering up her naked charms for my entertainment.
This was her personal submissive position. She had insisted on a "subby pose in order to play out her need for purgation. I, on the other hand, was still unsure about my feelings with regard to "our game."
The lady could be a pretentious bitch but she was built like the Grand Coulee Dam. The firm round curves of her ass cut sharply into the back of her thighs and her tapered legs were a temptation no heterosexual male could resist.
Sprawled over the arm of the couch, her ass cheeks called to me. "I need to be paddled," they repeated over and over. Her pale smooth was broken only by the crease below her cheeks and those on the back of her knees.
I stepped forward and slapped her cheeks hard with my open hand leaving four distinct welts where my fingers contacted her creamy white flesh. Her body bucked and she moaned into a pillow. I grabbed a handful of her dark hair and pulled her head up out of the cushions. My hand connected with her ass again.
PLAP
She squealed and twisted her body.
"Sammy, I missed you," she panted.
PLAP
Her body jerked again. "I'm yours to use..." she whispered.
PLAP
I let go of her hair and she fell facedown on the couch. I unbuckled pants and dropped my boxers. Spying a small patch of dark hair peeking at me between her plush thighs, I lunged my body towards it before I was fully erect and pumped at her open body rapidly. Clutching at her hips, I increased my tempo. I wanted to punish her for something. Anything. Maybe it was for the treatment I was receiving as an established writer, the treatment I never got before.
When I was busting my hump to break even, the working class folks were my only allies. The owner of the local Mexican restaurant gave me a discount and beamed when I showed up for dinner, while the editor of the neighborhood newspaper wouldn't even return my phone calls. When my book made the NY Times Best Seller List I made sure any interviews were booked at my favorite Mexican restaurant and that someone on an expense account, picked up the tab for the spendiest meal on the menu. Hell, Arturo, the owner, wanted me to marry his pretty but plump eighteen-year-old daughter when he found out I made a living, albeit meager, as a writer.
Who knows, if not for my "big break" I might have satisfied being the pretty Castilian's secret lover. Hell, she might've been my wife by now.
But now I was "important," according to my agent.
"Turn around!" I barked at panting brunette.
She pushed herself up off the arm of the couch. With her knees tucked into the hollow of her elbows I grabbed her hips and rammed my cock deep into waiting body. She fell forward and bit into my shoulder as her breath came in short gasps.
"Punish me, Sammy..." she whispered. This made me angry--she was always telling me what to do--and I slammed myself harder into her slippery folds. She moaned deeply in response.
"Jees... us!" Her release began with a body length shudder. I felt muscles deep inside her body spasm and watched her chin fall onto her chest. Mouth open, she twisted her face into a gruesome orgasm mask. Then her head rolled back onto her shoulders and she was finished.
I pulled my angry cock from her body and she quickly dropped to her knees as I let loose with a thick white stream of spunk that hit her open mouth with the first shot.
She offered up her tongue as a target and I pushed forward to shove my still pumping dick into her warm mouth. Swallowing in silence her fingers tugged gently at my balls.
I took two steps back and Molly fell forward on her hands and knees still gasping for air. Then I hiked my pants up, turned and shuffled into the kitchen without a word. A bottle of expensive local Pinot Noir called out to me from the wine cooler and I popped the cork. Molly padded into the kitchen and stood behind me. With her hands in front of her neatly trimmed dark stripe of pubic hair and her eyes downcast she stood passively next to the refrigerator.
She stared at the floor while she spoke. "When you called I said I wanted to talk."
