Chapter 4
The Redhead, the Brunette and Me makes three
Eve. She looked tall but was only five six, five seven. She was a cliché; long hair—breast length, dirty blond, streaked with different shades but different carpet color, which I learned later, so dyed to achieve the effect. She dressed with class but when I followed her to the jewelry store, she was dressed in clothes which were two years out of style, one sleeve had a thread, tell tale signs of decay.
She was a middle daughter of the nation's royalty. Lost in the mix, she retreated to Holdingsfield. She seemed to rule that little pond for she organized and directed and established precedents. It was she who ousted my sister Sharon with a overtly casual campaign. I could not decide if she was one of my true targets or not but she appeared to be a worthy target, regardless.
She possessed the class and sophistication she was raised with . . . and with the secrecy. She fled her family, their purposes, their intentions for her, their encumbrances soon after graduation from college, a legacy of the family name with all its expectations, predictions and Calvinist determinism. Because she was not critical to their purposes her disappearance from their world was not missed or violently opposed. It was tolerated with a complacent conviction that she would eventually see the error of her ways and return to the fold, the cove of the Covingtons a she was wont to express it.
Eve appeared with them socially on occasion but they did not deign to pay any attention to her life. So they missed or ignored the fact of her husband slowly going broke, a descent which my team was intent on hurrying. Ignored with a true indifference which must have cut her in much the same way that her assault on Sharon her my sister. Life seemed curiously balanced before I intervened and I hoped my introduction into her karmic equation would not aim me at a nasty, brutish and short life as a rat when I was next reincarnated.
We steered tenants away from their properties with inducements, got their staff pregnant, exposed their gay members in the closet and hired those out of the closet away to work for us for they were routinely excellent. We robbed them of their talent along with their clients. Eve's husband had a real estate business which would have been under pressure in any case because of the economy but we made perfectly legal, though I admit costly, moves to move it along, accelerate it which I also confess was because I came to want her in the sexual way. Also, because if any of the women of Holdingsfield possessed the bearing and the comportment of a board member or even the Chairwoman herself, it was Eve Covington Sawyer. We moved on them soon after the slide began. I happened to know that they were rapidly approaching the bottom though I had not sent them the notice of eviction yet. Eve deserved a different tack, she deserved tact in fact. Nonetheless, when she asked the clerk to show her the diamond necklace, I knew she was window shopping as the surprised and eager clerk did not.
The clerk turned away and I eased in behind Eve. I placed my hands on her hips. I leaned forward and spoke in a normal voice, "That would look beautiful on your neck. Would you allow me to buy it for you?" To her credit, she did not flinch at my touch or show fright when I spoke nor was she enticed by my honest offer, false as it was.
She turned her head and said in a quiet voice, "I am married."
I chuckled deep in my chest. "So am I. You are Eve Covington. I recognize you." The clerk returned with a ruby and sapphire creation.
"That will be all. Let me look at it." Eve dismissed the woman with a voice at once gentle and uncompromising." The woman turned away and found something to occupy her attention. Eve picked it up and held each end of the strand up to me. From behind her, I reached around each side of her, took it and merely held it in front of her, not touching her at any point. My cock, however, stirred, standing this close to her. She gathered her long, blond hair and pulled out to the side, out of the way exposing the graceful line of her august neck. I fastened the stunning necklace and stepped back. She turned around.
"What do you want?" She said, any pretense of tolerance, gone.
"I am your neighbor." I said. She gave the merest acknowledgement. "I am not really married." That did get a flicker, a subtle change in the eyes.
"What are you doing here? Why are you bothering me?
"Am I bothering you? I apologize." I waited without movement, without expression.
Finally Eve nodded.
"I know about you. You ARE famous after all. I have been trying to figure out how to introduce myself without being creepy."
She nodded again and with that small motion her shield thinned a bit. "Well, I am Eve Covington." She said in a voice flush with reservation and the pleasure at being recognized. She could not hide or help it. Covington was her family name; she did not give me her married name which was Sawyer. That was encouraging.
"Can I buy you a lemonade?" I asked.
"Are you always this rude?"
"Rude?" I did not understand.
"Are you going to introduce yourself?"
I actually blushed. I presumed she knew my name but then again I knew hers and she introduced herself. "Joshua." I said. "My name is Joshua Gale."
"Yes." She responded. "Pleased to meet our new neighbor." Her voice was cold enough to belie any pleasure at our meeting.
I turned around and walked towards the food court. It was a Tuesday morning, early and the mall was sparsely populated. I heard the click clack of her heels on the linoleum floor as she followed. She caught me as I found the table and put down my back pack. I was dressed in shorts, T and carried a small back pack with nothing interesting in it except a brand new vibrator specially designed for clitoral stimulation. I headed for the 'Lemons Into Lemonade' shop and waited in line, not turning around. When I returned to the table the pack was adjusted. She had surely looked. It was possible she found the brand new vibrator but she had certainly thought about trying to look—likely checking for recorders or cameras which would have identified me as paparazzi parasite. I sat down and looked into her perfectly clear blue eyes. She made a swipe at her hair with her graceful lightly, tanned hand. Her nails, like nearly everything, were perfect.
Eve put hers lip to the straw and pursed a bit, drawing the cold lemonade into her mouth. Her crystalline blue eyes were down, showing the prefect eye shadow, the long lashes and the liner that gave her the effect every hooker in the world tried but always failed to attain: royal sensuality—both the promise and impossibility of sex in every detail of her presentiment. "So, Mr. Gale. I understand you are fucking a couple of our mutual neighbors." Eyes fixed on me as she spoke. I did not flinch or deny anything immediately, she stirred the drink with the straw and drank some more though watching me with her huge eyes.
I stared into her eyes for a moment and then let mine slip down to the limp labels of her blouse, a sort of avocado green mixed with a shimmering silver that, though out of date, was stunning on her. Finally I nodded. "For money, actually." I said casually. "Not everyone is as lucky as you are to have sufficient financial backing in this harsh economy. I am making it possible for Liza, Ted and Val to stay in their houses. I am not fucking Ted, incidentally. I hope this will help support our collective real estate valuations. Why didn't you offer to loan them money? I would have thought you of all people would be in a position to help your friends and neighbors out?" I pivoted to the offensive without a pause.
She did the same. "Charity at this level of society is like a weight, it drags one down into the gutter, both parties really. Hard times are a test of one's poise and grace under pressure. If you loan to your friends you lose both friendship and your money which is not a good combination and almost always a bad transaction." She drank again.
My throat was dry and so I drank as well, taking the pause as time to think. I nodded. "I get it, they have no collateral so there was no basis to help them. They really had nothing to offer you. That makes sense."
"No need to be nasty, Mr. Gale."
"I am sorry, I am not trying to be nasty. Really. I had hoped that this sort of thing would remain, shall we say, discreetly out of sight? I am a little off guard that you are so well acquainted with the, ah, situation."
"I think you will find that there are no secrets in our community. We know each other quite thoroughly and appreciated a sort of, shall we say, frankness when it comes to sex, or money for that matter. But, regardless, I do want to thank you for helping my friends. Even if you are forcing yourself on defenseless women, it is a gesture I will not forget."