Afternoon sunlight leaks through closed curtains. She fights to stay awake, sinking into the recliner's supple leather, bare feet brushing the rug. Remote in hand snaps the widescreen television on. CNN's prim-voiced newscasters are a welcome break in the apartment's quiet. Luxurious and still, the empty rooms had been napping with her. In her state of exhaustion the veneered walls resemble the inside of a casket; the relaxed waking death far too pleasurable.
Her arrival in this chair marks the end of a two hour crucible which Ashley had begun in the master bedroom's bed. She had been laying sideways in that bed, her limbs tangled with silk sheets, down comforter and her head confused among broad pillows. She'd been sleeping, yes, but is such rest -- the sort of rest we take in the middle of the day after complete exhaustion, the sort of rest in which our minds drink wetly inked dreams the way a man dying of thirst will drink water, the sort of rest where to move our bodies is akin to a move through thick syrup -- is such rest simply sleep? This is the sort of rest Ashley had been having, in complete darkness cocooned in a four-poster Victorian bed dressed in panties and bra. While outside it has been at times near to ninety degrees, Ashley had been on the bed catching across her person a draft of cool, conditioned air. She would wake, look across the room at bright blue digital numbers, realize how much of the day had slipped by her and promptly go back to sleep. The clock awareness ritual occurred many times. The last time, Ashley slunk out of the bed's side and onto the floor, crawled into the living room where, squinting against shafts of light coming through the bay window's blinds, she eventually crawled into this leather chair.
She now sits, legs slightly parted and hands wrapped about the remote control which is entirely too heavy. Ashley has no desire to open those blinds up to sun-soaked Hoboken, New Jersey where she knows the air is hot and oppressive. If not for this apartment -- and Stryker, of course -- she would have taken herself immediately and without delay back down to South Carolina a long time ago.
Electronica filled the darkness; laser-lit and tobacco-smoked with neon billiard balls on black felt. She played well and time marched on. She gambled her body against the male cash dressed in ridiculous and expensive colors as well as silver and tattoos. She won so much; she nearly always won after taking care of the details with a cue stick rocking in one hand and the other draped over a muscular shoulder to her whispering in an ear the prizes she'd forfeit if she lost. (She had lost, once, third shot with nothing but the eight left it dangling just a bit too close to a side-pocket and the man with the denim and giant muscles gently took her to one of the sofas and wrapped her lips around him, not at all unpleasant, as some friends hid them).
The music sounded to her a mix of natures both carnal and spiritual. Church music, if desire were God and made sense to worship at two and three in the morning while smoking tobacco and passionately warring on pool tables. She needed not the money, at all. Sean questioned nothing and handed her stacks of green hundreds whenever she asked. She often gave away entire rolls to homeless people on her walk home. Last night, she hadn't. Reeking of smoke, other women's perfume and dry ice as the sun rose over Manhattan she went into an Alphabet City diner, wearing stiletto-heeled boots, a leather mini skirt and matching corset and ate breakfast. She ate slowly and to her fill. A cab ride back into Hoboken saw her home at close to seven in the morning. Immediately she stripped, showered and crawled into bed. Stryker wasn't back yet. Stryker returned not long after, she knew she hadn't been sleeping, exactly, but hadn't been awake anymore either. She could hear the thunder of his boots in the living room and heard him cursing under his breath. "Wake up," he said as he entered the room.
