Naisa's Nocturne

Sunrise signaled a time for rejuvenation, a chance to renew oneself or correct an injustice, but not for Naisa. Wailing as if she wanted the world to hear, she thrust her head forward into a downy pillow, her teardrops moistening it and staining the tousled satin sheets. Seven hours earlier, her paramour surrendered to her syncopated caresses. In unison they had shuddered so violently in the moonlit room to the backdrop of the saxophonic strains of a Sade ballad. Their passion ignited with such force that the canopy collapsed from its frame.

Now Naisa's pussy lay open like an oozing wound, her lover's cum an abstract painting on her thighs. She missed him and knew that listening to a little Sade would satiate her emotional withdrawal, so she emerged from the bed to play the CD in her boom box. She meant to select the song, "Is It a Crime?" but heard the chanteuse singing the first stanza of "Mr. Wrong." The bass line disguised an intruder's footsteps in the corridor. Naisa dragged herself back to bed, laughing at how lust had placed it in disrepair. Drifting off to sleep, she was oblivious to the figure, cloaked in black, skulking toward her. One of Naisa's last sensations would be the metallic aura of a gun blast and salty, sanguineous wine trickling from her painted lips. ...

Katydids emitted their shrill sounds on a typical August afternoon like festive maracas shaking from tree branches. The cacophony was a signal that the hottest day of the summer had arrived and that the insects' demise grew near. Fending off the sun's blazing assault with a bare arm, Naisa was a vampire trying to escape. It was 3 p.m. Oh, how I love sleeping in, she thought. But the solar searchlights peeking through her grime-caked blinds had found her. Her black silk negligee lay rippled at the end of her rickety bed. A couple of stretches until her puffy nipples tingled with renewed life, and she would be ready to face another mateless Saturday.

Pantherlike, she padded across the plush burgundy carpet to the full-length mirror. Glancing back at her was a stranger who possessed frown lines and large, almond-shaped eyes accompanied by dark circles that required daily concealer. Her onetime animated, pendulous breasts were aching to be ogled, fondled, cupped and sucked instead of squeezed on an annual basis between the icy cold vise of a mammography machine. What she needed was an affirmation for the moment, so she opened her dusty armoire and programmed the CD component of her boombox to play Sheryl Crow's "Soak Up the Sun," followed by George Benson's greatest-hits CD. Using a bottle of bath gel as a microphone, she sang along with the music and sashayed to the bathtub to scrub away the cum, a sticky reminder of a sensuous dream.

Hours later, wearing concealer that restored her face to Beyonce's bronze brilliance and a body shaper that created the illusion her tits and ass could defy gravity, Naisa was ready to test the meat market. She wasn't "crazy in love," just horny. The meat that she fantasized about hung in the Dockers and denims and of men cruising up and down Van Def Avenue, the main shopping strip, and in the Speedos of ubiquitous cyclists. However, Wilcom Mall was the address of the hottest action. Along the railing that circled above the mall's escalators, vultures in men's clothing lurked just for a glimpse of cleavage. Of course, Naisa purposely wore a blouse with an eye-popping décolletage.

On this midsummer afternoon Naisa's choice for browsing was Champ's Electronics and CD Palace on the top floor of the Wilcom Mall. Instead of taking the elevator, she rode the escalator with her legs spread as if she were a drug mule getting frisked by a narc. Her ample bottom in full view to a stocky man standing so closely behind her that he could have been her Siamese fraternal twin.

"Hey, baby. Are you for real?" the predator asked.

"Yeah," Naisa replied without turning around. Then, borrowing teenagers' vernacular, she asked, "Do you feel me?"

The stranger fondled her huge buttcheeks with one hand while keeping the other hand on his expanding erection, which was about to pop like a pan of Jiffy popcorn left on the burner. His mind swirled with lascivious images of his masochistic prey. All she could think of was the mall architect's genius; designing such a steep escalator. The ride allowed enough time to consummate a quick encounter. As if the Muzak programmer was reading her mind, she heard George Michael's "I Want Your Sex" cranking through the speakers.

Now, knees weak and her mind a blur, she was surrendering to each felonious butt squeeze. Like the vixen she pretended not to be at work, there on the escalator she gyrated to the song's sinuous keyboard melody and stripper beat. She could feel the man's clumsy fingers unhooking her body shaper at the crotch, then the middle finger slipping into her sopping pussy. Absorbed in pleasure, she was unaware that her private parts were now on full display to other people on the escalator. She found it strange that not one person expressed shock or disgust. Quite to the contrary, both men and women were doing their wanton versions of The Divinyls' "I Touch Myself."

Her transient lover removed his finger and tasted her essence. She tugged on her stiff, prickly nipples and lifted her left leg on the next higher step to give her anonymous lover an easier angle from which to grope her pussy. He gave his turgid member a few rough yanks before inserting his saliva-slick thumb into her asshole, which immediately caused her to wince in pain. If the Muzak had not been playing so loudly, others around the pair may have heard their whimpers and moans. Their encounter ended when he stopped at the second-level food court.

Naisa was so lightheaded that she rethought shopping at Champ's but in minutes was stepping through the revolving door and into the thumping drum and bass sounds of a rap instrumental. Never was she more at home. Browsing the contemporary jazz rack, she felt someone's eyes burning a hole in her cotton tee.

"Naisa Gibbs!" Stu, the store's manager, shouted. His smile left a salacious impression on her, especially when he completed his greeting with a peck on the cheek and a poke of her ass. Possessing firsthand knowledge of her sexual proclivities, he sniffed around her and suggested she freshen up in the employee lavatory. Offering to stand guard at its entrance had its benefits, such as peeking in on Naisa washing her hairy crotch.

When she returned to the floor and, again, to Stu's wide grin, the blues song "After Midnight" was echoing throughout the eclectic store. "You know, Stu, I think I'm going to cut this visit short and check out some live blues. How about you come with me, huh?"

"Sorry, my baby's mama is coming over tonight. Besides," he said, "I'm already pretty close to losing child support as it is." To that, she raised her hands in surrender and bid him good night.

Dusk settled in the bricks and mortar of the low-level buildings at the center of town. Wearing a barely there micromini skirt on a breezy evening made hailing a livery car to the other side of town a easy task. The distance to Goode's Bar would have cost anyone else about $12, but Naisa's ride was free. She winked at the livery driver, a man of Middle Eastern descent, and gave him the address of her destination. His car was fragrant with jasmine incense, the back seat musty from an assortment of semen stains. They both knew the name of this game. After parking on the first desolate block available, he cranked up the volume on his Arabic-language music station, peered briefly into his rearview window, then joined his passenger behind a sliding bulletproof window.

Dissonant, trancelike music from surrounding speakers induced a high. The man's breath and clothes reeked of pot, and his khakis were bulging at the crotch. She peeled off her tee, panting from lust as much from the stifling heat. When he mounted her, his perspiration dripped onto her face, and he gazed lewdly at her heaving breasts before deciding to paw at them. Cupping his lumpy nutsack made him gasp, so he returned the favor by licking and sucking her thick nipples. She came in a spurt, her cries mixing with the Arabic singer's vocals and her natural lube leaking onto the taxi's worn vinyl upholstery. Had two drunken men not stumbled near the taxi looking for a spot to relieve themselves, Naisa would have allowed the man to fuck her until daylight. She told him she would pass on Goode's Bar, known for its heady blues, but she asked him to take her a few blocks away to a join that Stu and other transient lovers had raved about: Star Café.

Inside Star Café, Curtis St. John, a corporate shirt who moonlighted on Friday and and Saturday nights, was in the midst of singing two sets of jazz and R&B covers. "Curt," as he was known by the predominantly female members of the audience, crooned and gyrated through George Benson's rendition of "Lady Blue." Little did he know that he was hypnotizing only one woman, Naisa. By the time he belted out the song's crescendo, he already had been baptized in his own perspiration. Meanwhile, Naisa was experiencing an out-of-body experience. Although, like the ice floating in her fuzzy navel, she was both solid and liquid. Passion danced between Curt's notes and her flushed ears, from his gently swaying hips to her rigorous grinding ass. "Blu-u-u-u-e!" his melismatic voice sang. Upon Curt's cadence, she slid off the slippery bar stool, leaving behind a clear but slimy reminder of her existence. When he saw Naisa slink her way toward the exit, Curt jumped off the stage after her.

Quick on his feet, the café's manager, Delton, injected Astrud Gilberto's "Stay" into the sound system. The percolating percussion followed Curt into the alley, where he found Naisa clutching a wire fence. Although she had just flirted with him, she suddenly felt afraid of his sexual heat. Her mind seesawed between lust and flight. If only she had listened to her Rollerblading girlfriend's enticements to join her gym, she would have scaled the fence and hailed a cab home. But she was now face to face with Curt and swore she could smell his testosterone from the collection of the beads of his perspiration. He nearly tiptoed toward her like a ballet dancer, then pounced on her like a cat. Her arms were outstretched above her head now, her back arched. He embraced her tenderly, then firmly, desiring for his cock to express the gratitude he felt toward her. No woman had ever reacted so strongly to any of his performances at the cafe.

"I've never seen such a physical and emotional response to my --" Naisa's kiss pre-empted what Curt had wanted to say.

"'Lady Blue' is one of my favorite songs, and you sound better than Benson. I want you now!" she shrieked, while Astrud sang: Stay/And we'll/Make sex/With music.

"Now? But, but I have to return to finish the set, or else Delton will fire me," he said. "Guys like me come a dime a dozen, and I need the extra money because the ad agency isn't paying me diddley."

"I'm glad to know guys like you come at all," she said, melting in his embrace and entranced by the bossa nova. There in the alley, Naisa stripped down to her birthday suit as if she were in Rio. She felt her gooseflesh rise the way it had in the bathroom at Champ's in the mall. Curt was speechless. Her hands warily moved up and down and across the silken fabric of his shirt, and she felt tiny shocks in her abdomen whenever her fingers made contact with his muscles. He already had undone the top three buttons onstage at the manager's suggestion, anything to draw a larger female audience to the café. Now he tore off the shirt, sending the buttons flying through the air and then tinkling like piano keys against the concrete.

With her expert tongue, she traced his perspiration from his fuzzy chest up to his chin, then his pouty lips, back to his chest, which was heaving. When she began licking the hairline from his navel to his groin, he was moaning the way he had done during "Lady Blue." She eagerly undid his zipper. Using only her thick tongue to guide his stiff cock through his fly, she teased the head and shaft, causing him to gyrate his hips. It took all the strength he had to stop his orgasm from spewing into her mouth. But, there in the alley, he lifted her to her feet, then propped her gingerly against the brick wall. Upon insertion, Naisa yelped like a feline in heat. He slid into her slowly and thrust deeply, alternately flicking his tongue between her lips and using it to simulate penetration.

Amid their moaning and groaning, neither Naisa nor Curt noticed that one of the women from the audience was spying on their act. When the woman was summoned inside by a friend, she accidentally let the screen door slam. The pair gathered their clothing and, at Naisa's suggestion, continued their liaison at her apartment. ...

How Naisa had despised the sunlight, but now it felt welcoming, its warmth brief as its brilliance began to fade to black behind her eyelids. Sunrays bounced off the small pool of blood expanding around her lifeless body. Unbeknownst to her, a larger pool of blood had coagulated around Curt's body in her kitchen.

Back in the bedroom, the murderer seemed indifferent to neighbors' loud knocking and muffled voices. They were attempting to check whether Naisa was in any danger. The intruder was in no hurry to escape and could only think: It would take at least a half-hour for the police to arrive in this part of town. After ambling over to the door, the gun emptied of bullets, she disguised her voice as Naisa's to assuage their fears. Deidre St. John headed back to the crime scene, singing the song that her husband, Curt, had dedicated to her at their wedding reception only three years earlier. In front of 350 guests he had crooned "Lady Blue" solely for her. Soley for her.