I want to thank Jerry Olson yet again for his skilled editing. This story was written one night when I was in a dark mood. Joanna AKA Tigcub
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Joe strolled down the back ally as though he were walking through a summer hayfield. It was a horrible neighborhood, a very dangerous side of town. Nonetheless he ambled along kicking some garbage lightly out of his path as he made his way through the night. He would have made a handsome figure if there had been enough light to see his features. His hair was dark and slightly wavy; it was cut fairly short and stylish. His eyes were blue like the Caribbean Sea.
He looked to be in his late 30s. His body would not have gone unnoticed by most women. He was on his way home to Brandy his girl friend. He was anxious to be at home; he wanted to rest in her arms and listen to her as she described her day. He wanted to hear her simple stories of shopping and getting her hair done. Sometimes he longed for simple things. He liked they way she would stroke his hair and back as the TV played some re-run of MASH. He wanted to make love to her.
Joe sniffed the air around him; he wondered if he smelled like the woman that he had just been with. He didn't want to go home smelling of another's perfume; it might upset Brandy. He respected her more than that and he wanted her to be happy because she was very important to him. At this point in his life he knew if your woman isn't happy you're not happy either. He had just eaten so she didn't need to feed him tonight. They could just relax and pretend to be a normal couple.
He finally reached his neighborhood and entered the old hotel, turned apartments. It still had some nineteen forties style architecture and the owner had kept it up well. If there was a nice place in this part of town this was it. Up the old cage style elevator and to his door he still was contemplating whether he had wiped all the lipstick from his neck. He entered their apartment. It was clean and bright as usual. He could smell her even from the other room. He heard her singing to herself from the bedroom.
"Joe is that you?" She came to him with a big greeting hug.
"I wondered when I would be seeing you. You have been gone two days. I missed you Babe."
Her long brown hair was damp and she smelled like some kind of soap, lavender maybe. She looked like the sun to him, bright and cheerful full of life. She was pretty, a natural beauty, part Indian; she had a dark smooth skin tone like a natural tan. She was tall and thin with nice size breasts.
Joe had been with Brandy for nine years and he had never tired of her. He loved talking to her and touching her as much now as he had the day he had met her at some lonely bar all those years ago. She had just been different than the others he knew; something about the two of them clicked. Who knows what brings people together?
"Joe you smell, Hun. Why don't you jump in the shower and wash the streets from your body and get out of those dirty clothes. Are you hungry?"
"No I'm not hungry right now." He dreaded that question. She never questioned him about where he had been. He knew that she knew. She was cool about it. If it bothered her she never let on. In the bathroom he piled his dirty clothes on the floor and waited for the water to get warm. He realized then that he could indeed smell the woman he had been with just a few hours ago all over his naked body. He noticed a small scratch on his side from one of her fingernails. In all the excitement he had not even felt the women dig at him.
He stepped into the shower and washed the smell of cheap perfume and sweat from his body. As the water ran down the drain so also he let the memory of her flow from him and wash away with the waste water. She had been a whore, a wasted life; fueled by drugs and alcohol. Almost all of her humanity had been obliterated. Her brain was dulled by the methamphetamines she sold herself for. He had picked her up as a meal of opportunity.