This morning began like any other morning for me. I missed most of it. This is what comes of being a night person, you tend to miss most of the mornings, at least that part of the mornings between four and eleven. As far as I was concerned mornings ended not long after my head hit the pillow, and stuttered back to life at eleven. Whoever's pillow it was didn't bother me. This morning it was mine, and the one next to it was occupied by 'Round Heels Rhonda' who had agreed, when asked, to share my bed.
I had a choice between her and my usual bed-share companion, Sweet Susie, who had unfortunately announced early last evening that she was unable to oblige me because the flags were out, and she knew that strawberry dipping was not my scene. Susie was like that, if she was unable to oblige me she would find an alternative. This morning it was Rhonda who she had asked.
Before you leap to the conclusion that I, we, seem to have a very casual attitude to sex, I should point out that Susie and I are in a committed relationship, apart from the monthly visits of her bloody periods. To plug that gap, she would find me another gap to plug. The way that she rationalised it was that she didn't want me left to my own devices when her monthlies intervened. To protect her interests she would find a casual opening for me to fill.
Rhonda was an obliging young back-up singer in 'Backwater', our blues band. Her nick-name of 'Round Heels' came from her penchant for falling onto her back whenever a guy that took her fancy made her an offer she couldn't refuse. Susie was our lead vocal, not just because she was easy on the eye, sort of like Stevie Nicks only an octave lower. She had a voice to die for, all deep and husky, with such powerful phrasing that you didn't need to understand the lyrics to understand the song. My part in this whole thing was that I played the blues harp and added my voice on occasions. She said the harp made my lips softer, nothing at all to do with it matching perfectly her singing. We were both able to vamp in harmony without having to rehearse a song to death.
I rolled out of bed and was busy preparing my standard breakfast of coffee, black and strong, and a cigar, an alleged Monte Christo that was about as real as a ten dollar Rolex. I didn't hear Rhonda emerge from the sleeping and fucking section of my loft that was hidden behind a curtain strung along a wire stretched between two columns, but that was until this almighty screech pierced my eardrums. "What the fuck." That was Rhonda, the screech wasn't from her, the screech was from Sheldon, the cat that owned me. I would have given him his full name, Sheldon Cooper, except that he would have considered that to be an affront.
"You were about to sit in his spot." I said by way of explanation.
"Come again?"
"He has laid claim to that spot on the sofa, and not even I am allowed to sit there."
Sheldon glared at me from his spot, his eyes telling me that I should be more careful who I brought home with me. He had a soft spot for Susie, and would sometimes forsake his spot and curl up on her lap, which was an inconvenience when I attempted to make a move on her. It took a bowl of his favourite chow to get him to relinquish her lap long enough for me to get her into bed. Even then he would, after we had finished rocking the boat, jump onto the bed and curl up against her body while we all slept.
On the occasions that I crashed at Susie's apartment, Sheldon would greet my bleary eyed return with a certain degree of disdain, to tell me that he was most put out by the fact that he had missed out on sharing my bed with her. If for any reason that Susie did not share my bed, as in this morning, he considered it to be beneath his dignity to share with a stranger and would not join me, but suffered in silence on the sofa. It was his way of punishing me.
My loft, as I called it because that title lent an artistic aesthetic to the space that I occupied, was above the Penthouse of this building in the CBD, a building made up of ground floor retail space with a couple of floors of offices, then ten floors of serviced apartments. Above all of this was the plant room, hidden under a large pyramid, where resided the air-conditioning plant, the motor room for the lifts and me. I had my own private entrance from the under-croft car park by way of the service lifts. When someone came calling they would ring me, and I would lower the key to the lift down to them on the end of a fishing line. I had a better view than even the penthouse, and it was fine as long as you didn't mind the hum of the plant room. I compensated by playing my music loud.
"What's the story with you and Susie?" Rhonda asked.
"What do you mean?"
"You two have been going together since you walked down the gangplank of Noah's boat, and yet she asked me to fuck you. What gives?"
"Didn't she explain it to you?"
"She said something about a change being as good as a holiday and that the two of you have this arrangement of taking a break from each other for a couple of days every month. I still don't get it, if I was to last longer than a couple of nights with some guy, I sure as hell wouldn't be sharing him with anyone else, for whatever reason."
"She's just protecting what's hers. Let me ask you one thing, what happens to women every month?"
"Oh, I'm beginning to get it."
"I love the girl." Susie was hardly a girl any more, those days were long gone. "And she loves me. We lead the kind of lifestyle that means that kids should never happen. It's not that we don't want them, but that we are responsible citizens, and if we can't ensure that we can be responsible for raising a kid, we won't ever have one. We have a very active sex life, and she wants me to continue having one, even when she is unable to oblige me."
"She could always blow you, I've done that plenty of times. Guys seem to like that just as much as fucking me."
"How does your jaw feel after you've done it?"
"That depends on how big it is and how long it takes me." She thought about it for a minute or two. "I see it now, she's worried about dislocating her jaw on your monster, and not being able to sing the next night."
"Monster is something of an exaggeration, but it would take her some time to get me off, and she knows that I'd be thinking the whole time that I should have my cock in her cunt and not in her mouth."
"So for a couple of nights a month she finds you another cunt to fuck, no strings attached, and no promise of any relationship."
"That's about it."
"I have a suggestion."
"And what might that be?" I was curious.
"Would Susie come at me being your regular red rag root, what do you think?"
"You'd have to ask her, I would have no objections, you were good enough to please me."
"And if this worked out, we could always move up to some three way action."
"Now that I'm not going to agree to, unless and until she gives her approval. In fact I'm not going to comment one way or the other."
"Do you think that she'd approve?"
"No way." I was hoping that she wouldn't, it would do my ego no good at all if she did.
I heard the service lift reach the top and the door open so I strolled across and removed the morning paper that the Concierge downstairs so kindly sent up to me every day and sent the lift back down. Daniel the Concierge was a thoughtful young man, he knew my timetable pretty well, and didn't send the paper up until he knew that I was out of bed. He knew better than to disturb my sleep, or whatever I was doing.
The front page headline grabbed my attention: "BABE'S BODY IN BLUES BAR". Quickly reading on I was shocked to find that the bar in question was the Blue Note, my very own stamping ground. Fear drove me to read on, relief overtook me when the body was identified as a blonde woman, medium to heavy build and around 20 years of age, it wasn't Susie. The body had been tentatively identified as Tania, a prostitute who worked the local area, although this could not be verified until her dental records were checked. The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the back of her head. The delay in identification was because the killer had used a soft point bullet that had removed most of her face on the way through.
