This is being submitted out of sequence. Chapters 4 and 5 are proving challenging, both in terms of the writing and the time I have to devote to it, but I already had this later chapter composed and thought you might enjoy a glimpse into the future. When the whole is stitched together, I'm sure it will make perfect sense, but I think this one stands fairly well on its own. It would probably help to have read the earlier chapters, but the usual summary follows below:
In Chapter One, Paul gave his fairly new girlfriend, Kim, a dose of a mysterious powder called Q'injo, given to HIM by a buddy who swore that it was "the only true aphrodisiac in the world." It worked. What Paul didn't realize at first was that Kim tasted his semen within the allotted one hour time frame of the powder's active phase, binding her to him for good (or certainly for lots of good sex). As Paul's buddy tells him, "the high of being with you becomes like the best sex-and-romance high ever and the withdrawal of being without you is worse than heroin and nicotine withdrawal combined."
In Chapter Two, we saw the Q'injo experience from Kim's perspective, as she wrote in her diary about events in the laundry room on that first day and then an encounter with Paul on campus later that week. In Chapter Three, Paul picked up Kim for their first post-Q'injo date, but had a hard time getting her out of the house. Chapters Four and Five will recount the balance of that first date night, which involves more public exposure, some surprising revelations about Kim's sexual orientation (which will not surprise anyone who reads literature of this type), two new recruits, Paul helping out a good buddy (and himself), and Kim and Paul's first group action.
6 -- A Third Ace Joins the Deck
By the end of the semester, I'd gotten really used to having Kim and/or Yana around, taking care of my every sexual need and most of the rest of them too. My eating habits improved with Kim's cooking. Yana was better with take-out, but she had a few spicy dishes she did very well. The apartment had never been so clean and my laundry was washed and ironed every week on Sundays. Kim did the washing, Yana the ironing. Apparently, the men in the complex knew Kim's routine, since the laundry room got suspiciously crowded on Sunday morning.
And then Kim had to go out of town in the same week that Matt and Rose asked for Yana for a few days.
With Kim, it was one of those family obligation trips for the holidays. You can't get out of those when you're still living at home. For Yana, well, it seemed like the decent thing to do for Matt. I told him they'd have access, after all—and he didn't know about the trigger phrase I'd planted in Rose's subconscious and fully intended to use.
Regretful as I was at the prospect of not having my ashes hauled as often as I'd like for a week, I figured I'd survive. Yana was cool with it. She did what we told her and loved it, a very nice change from her previous persona. Kim was quite a bit more tearful about it, but I knew she'd be fine—and come back hornier than ever, with lots of nasty little diary entries for me to read.
They'd only been gone for twenty-four hours when my life got even more complicated and interesting than it already was, if you can believe it.
A bit of backstory: up until a year ago, I'd been a serious relationship. Her name was Susan and we were in love and headed for wedded bliss . . . or so I thought. Until she made a pass at my best friend, made up some amazing stories about me cheating on her to justify her choice to start sleeping with yet another guy, then cleaned out the joint checking account we'd been contributing to for the wedding before telling me, some three weeks AFTER she'd already made the decision, that "it was over." In other words, she broke my heart, ripped the pieces out of my chest and danced a tarantella on them before flitting blithely off to get engaged to a young local doctor, Barry, the new boyfriend of three weeks.
While Barry was a saint in a white coat, I was the "bad boy" boyfriend her parents—particularly her father--abhorred. I was the one who introduced Susan to her sexual self (over and over again) for two years prior to the break-up. And it had been quite an adventure. When we met, she was a senior in high school and I was the "college man" (an independent sophomore English major—not exactly the top of the social heap). She was this sexy blend of savvy and innocence—a 5'8" zaftig babe with 36Ds, killer curves and long, honey-blonde hair down to the bottom curve of her glorious bottom. She knew what she wanted, but hadn't yet figured out how she was going to get it or how much she was going to like it once she got a taste.
We tried just about everything two people with the right equipment and some imagination could try—and just about everywhere, including a racquetball court at the local Y . . . but that's a story for another time. One of her favorite things to do had been to pose for photos that I then developed in the darkroom in the art building at my school. (In the days before I could afford a digital—the modern smut photographer's choice). I had three large albums full of inventive erotica, with negatives, featuring Susan in and out of her clothes, in and out of doors and with me (and a few long, bulbous objects) in and out of her. Treasured possessions, those albums, though I hadn't been able to look at them since she dumped me for Barry-boy.
Imagine, then, my surprise when Susan appeared at my apartment door one weeknight a couple of days after Kim left town.
She was dressed to the nines -- plus. Black boots with little bows, tight black skirt, clingy white blouse, black choker and matching purse. She gave me her best "how could you not forgive li'l ol' me" smile, grasped my forearm with those cool, slender fingers I remembered so well, and stepped in for a quick hug and peck on my cheek before I could get my jaw off the entry hall tile.
The stream of babble was all Susan. What's going on with me quickly morphed into the far more interesting subject of what was going on with HER: New car, Mom-‘n-Dad good (not that I gave a fuck), "school's great, changed my major three times this year, ha, ha," mutual "friends" (who I haven't seen since we broke up) are doing great, la-dee-dah, la-dee-dah, remember Scooter? (yes—the prick from her church who always wanted to score with her and who I suspected probably had) and Bets Bradley (not a clue who she was, but apparently she'd had a Very Bad Time at Vanderbilt and was now home, sucking at the parental teat again after a stint in rehab). "So, Anyway . . . yadah-yadah Big Plans and yadah-yadah Exciting Happenings." And then she says, "In one more year, I'm done with school and Barry finishes his internship and then we're getting married . . . oh, sorry to bring that up."
I mumbled something about how it was fine, it'd been all of four months and I was All Better Now. And the whole time, my mind's churning with bitter resentment as the memories of those last few weeks flood back and my heart's aching all over again at how incredibly fucking gorgeously hot she looks and remembering how great those fingers always felt when they slipped around my prick, not to mention those silky blonde locks and those soft, pink lips. You'll probably be thinking, "What about KIM?" to which I can only say, if you're saying that, you've never had your heart broken like Susan broke mine. Kim was great, but Susan was my First Love (however misguided that may have been on my part). Kim was a keeper, Susan wasn't—but that didn't cool the warmth of the sentimental attachment to What Might Have Been, or the heat of the physical attraction I still felt away. The way it all ended just curdled those feelings into a nasty bile that I'd fed on, off and on, for four months.
Now, I'd like to say that the nasty scheme you've probably been expecting since the top of the chapter hatched AFTER the next words out of her mouth, but it wouldn't be true. It was before. As I contemplated my bile and felt it rising as a background track to her blithe chattter. The full extent of what I was going to do matured as the conversation—and her attempts at manipulation—continued.
"So, Paul, I was wondering," she said, doing a subtle come-on combined with a guilt trip by pouting at me, her head slightly drooping, through her feathery bangs, "If . . . maybe . . . if you'd let me have those . . . those pictures we took."
And there it was. Who could blame her? Her ex-boyfriend had reams of photos of her that could be very embarrassing if they should appear, say, on the world-wide web or something. I'd certainly considered it, but didn't have a scanner and, until this very minute, didn't think I was that kind of person. My recent experiences with Kim had revealed a . . . well, let's just call it a
darker
level to my personality, even as they had also fed something good in my soul.
