New Friends in the City
This picks up where Hartstein ends, it's a year later, and Paul is working with the editors on the finalization of his novel. Carol is no longer the leading editor working with Paul and it seemed that each day brought someone new into play as the many details of finalizing a novel before publication begin to overwhelm him. But he was buoyed by the fact that he now had a publication date and his world was spinning faster and faster with each passing day.
The work and its many ramifications compelled Paul Hartstein to move to the city where he wound up sharing an apartment with Miles David, a teammate of Paul's at Connecticut, who had a brief stint with the New York Football Giants and was currently a sportscaster with one of New York City's television stations.
In the spare time Paul had available, he hung with Miles and his girlfriend, Jade whom Paul considered a sexual minx, but managed to keep his hands and other body parts off of.
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Please Don't Tell was a smallish but dark and cozy cocktail lounge on St. Mark's Place which Paul accessed by walking through a telephone booth in the adjacent Crif Dogs establishment next door. He never failed to be amused by this corny ploy, but had to admit it was a near perfect hide-away in a city that had a million and one ways of garnering one's interest.
He stood just inside the entrance until his eyes adjusted to the darkness then spotted Miles and Jade off to his left. He waved to them and asked a passing waiter to bring him a chair, which was the bar's policy, i.e., fitting three or four at a table for two.
"Jade, Miles ... how's it going?" he said for openers.
"Hi Paul, we're good, and you?" Jade replied wide a wide-mouthed smile.
Paul often imagined her mouth around his dick when masturbating, but had never made a move on her partly out of respect for his roomie, and partly because she never gave him reason to think she'd be receptive to any overtures on his part.
"Better than I deserve," he responded good naturedly, as another couple sat down at a nearby table. It took a second or two before he recognized them.
"Reece?" Paul asked. "What the hell are you guys doing here?"
"Us? We live like three blocks away. Have you finished massaging your novel? I mean, no one's contacted me about the printing, (Reece owned the printing company that would be running copies of Paul's first novel when it was deemed ready to go to press.) or any of that bullshit."
Jade smiled knowingly at Reece's date, who she did not know. Miles nodded sagely at the other man but said nothing.
Paul brought Reece up to date on his book's publication status, and then signaled a waitress over to bring them all a round of drinks. Reece introduced his companion, a petite brunette with beguiling doe-like eyes, smallish breasts and lovely legs, as Toni the Wop."
"Come on, Reece, that's a little gross. You don't need to get nasty here," Paul said.
Toni, the center of attention that moment, sat staring at the table and waving her hands over the scarred wood very slowly. Her eyes were glazed over, but there was a faint smile on her face as if she knew a secret no one else at the table did.
She looked up at everyone and grinned. "My last name's Sporano, not Soprano, but Sporano. Reece thinks I'm related to a fictional character on HBO. I can't convince him otherwise, or at least he refuses to accept it, preferring the fictional me to the real me."
"Hey, no wait a minute. The real you gives great head, the fictional one no so much," Reece said too much laughter from the others at the table, including Toni.
"We're like totally high," Toni said and laughed.
"Yeah, we're like burning off our buzz, and then we'll go home and fuck like rabbit's," Reece added.
The drinks came and everyone stopped talking for a minute, then Jade spoke up. There was mischief in her sparkling eyes as she teasingly goaded Miles to regale the others with his mother—daughter story.
"You think?" he said.
"Oh yeah ... they'll love it. It's so you, baby!"
That settled matters on the subject and Miles began his story.
"I was exactly in the middle, equally too old for one and too young for the other and when we were out in public we felt almost like family."
"Did you act like family?" Reece inquired lewdly.
"Naw," Miles answered. "The three of us laughed too loudly and drank too much."
"Wait," Paul said, obviously interested in this turn of events and seeing story potential in it. "Which one did you start with first?"
"That's complicated," Miles answered. But of course that wasn't true at all. The only complication was explaining the truth without giving anything away. They might be friends, but when it came to that story, they only needed to hear so much.
"Anyway, we wound up back at their place, there was some groping in the vestibule with both of them, and I do recall swapping spit with the daughter there as well and that led to a shower that left us struggling to stand. But a little while after that the mother was squeezing my dick as we tried out some torrid kisses while the daughter was drying her hair.
"And so it went, week after week, for several months, making it with both of them, sneaking, quietly hiding, and telling outright lies, I still had no idea if the one knew about the other. When the end came it was simpler, but no less ambiguous. The daughter got a boyfriend, the mother a girlfriend and our secret meetings dissolved to occasional emails.
"Never a word, and never an honest moment."
"Come on, you have to give us more than that," Toni said breathlessly, pushing a shot of tequila towards him. Paul thought she was highly aroused by the story and filed that away for future reference.
Miles laughed and glanced down at his phone, pretending to be busy as he opened and read the text once more. Mom and I are single again. When are you coming back? ________________________________________
Reece looked questioningly at his partner, Toni, who nodded affirmatively. "Um, hey you guys, we ... umm, we're having a little get together at our place ..."
"It's gonna be a great fucking party, guys," Toni added, "and we'd love for you to come. We moved in last month and it's a totally killer pad. We have three bedrooms and a huge living room on the second floor over on 12th Street. Tomorrow at say nineish?"
And that was that.
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The following night Paul found Reece's new apartment awesome. It was full of furniture, real furniture not the pseudo junk most twenty-something's had, and there was real art on the walls, and beds with actual frames. It was the first full blown party Paul had been too since his college days-dozens of people were lounging around with drinks in their hands, and music was blaring from giant speakers set up in all four corners of the huge open room that looked out onto a slice of Abingdon Square.
Toni spotted Paul almost as soon as he walked into the apartment and gave him a big hug, making sure to rub her breasts against his chest long enough for him to appreciate their fullness.
"No date, Paul?"
