Shades Of Obsession

by JR King

  Daniel—John’s brother—said, “Listen y’all, I say after dinner we go to a lounge where the waitresses are cute and snow isn’t frowned upon.” He was a tall, strapping blond man, his mouth thin, almost lipless in its set. Conservative politician that he was, he wore a flag pin on his lapel.

  Watching Daniel’s eyes devour the tomboy waitress, I cocked an eyebrow. She had a world-class rack, and I was sure he was imagining his average cock sawing back and forth the valley in between.

  Tony asked him, “No sexcapades?”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Daniel sat up slowly and with great effort, puffing a deep sigh. I could smell tobacco on him. “I’ve no moral compunction against adultery, but as a public spokesperson, I don’t live in the fast lane, Tony. For all intents and purposes, I covet discretion. I could make an exception if the collateral is properly corralled and tested.” He started busying himself with the waitress. “Sugar, could you please bring me some butter? I ain’t likin’ this, needs to be more succulent.”

  “It doesn’t melt in your mouth, sir?”

  He knitted his fingers together. “From your lips to God’s ears, darlin’.”

  The two other men around the table joined Daniel in his effort to flirt with the waitress, and Tony, who had arranged this dinner, took the opportunity to grill me. “Why do you look so pissed? Did someone put a gun to your head and have you attend an Ann Coulter Fan Club meeting? And why do you want to rub elbows with these people?”

  Taking another oyster, I let it slide down my throat. “Hell if I know.” I didn’t have a hard time admitting to myself that I didn’t like my current company.

  The flirting between three grown men and a waitress went like this:

  “…off the top of you head, cite a few places you’d like us to take you, and please don’t say Vegas, baby.”

  “…Grand Canyon Arizona? Mount Rushmore South Dakota? Duval Street Key West? Gaslamp Quarter San Diego? The granddaddy of them all, I’d like to meet Oprah.”

  “…elk medallions and rattle snake eggs. Now we’re talking!”

  “…Duval Street all the way. We need to own a Margaritaville. Who in town happens to know Jimmy Buffet?”

  People like them, I thought dismally, were easily manipulated by simple infomercials, making me reconsider everything about my country.

  “Alex, why are we here?” Scowling, Tony raised his finger. “So help me God. If you lie to me again, I will lose my shit.”

  I couldn’t disguise the truth. No smoke and mirrors with Tony, he’d put me through the mill until I told him the truth. I cleared my throat in an attempt to remove all levity from my voice. “I’ve been tearing my hair out, man. I’m trying to find out why Jane Wilkinson is meeting Elena.”

  “Jane? She’s started a modeling agency, that’s probably why they’re meeting.”

  My mind was a tornado of thoughts. I can’t remember my answer verbatim, though I’m pretty sure it went something like, “Are you shitting me, asshole?”

  “I beg your pardon, Alex?”

  That drew the attention of our tablemates.

  “It was quite a dickish thing to say,” I apologized semi-politely.

  “Everything all right, boys?” frowned Antonio. He was short, large, had thinning hair but surprisingly his sideburns were dense. Thing is, I would never say he was fat, stating the obvious. I respected hoots like him, so I’d classified him in a more elaborate category. He was a robust man with a healthy smile and a hearty laugh, his appetite second to none, his ever-expanding wine-belly identifying his European heritage; matching Spain. I simply couldn’t look at a jowly chin sticking out of a starched Armani cutaway collar. It did hurt my eyes, and this is why business between us was conducted from the neck up, literally.

  The tension of my jaw severed as the corners of my lips inched upward. “Tony mentioned Jane’s new business. I was being an ass about it.”

  John said, “Ours is another world, isn’t it? And, no matter how hard model broads will try, they’ll never be good enough to reach the door to this world. They’re okay enough to boink.”

  I realized that breaking John’s neck would be too gentle. Too merciful. This moron needed to suffer, if only because his narrow-mindedness insulted my girl.

  Itching to ask Daniel a hundred questions, I began with the simplest one. “What’s Jane up to now?”

  He waved his brawny hand while giving another spiel. “My second wife struck gold. Look, fictional entertainment nowadays is filled with ugly duckling stories of ugly and fat looking women who capture the hearts of impossibly handsome men and the reverse. Now, understand that this is merely a desperate drug to keep acrimony and underdogs in place. Keep dreamers in a realm of possibilities.” He shrugged. “Have we ever witnessed a Brad Pitt or George Clooney type of actor date an ugly duckling? Of course not. But, my friends, but the dykes in Hollywood did it strike it home, they bested ugly duckling stories; by the end it always turns out that the duckling is a swan anyway, which secures the fact not to get us too high on the drug of dreams. Jane is trying to find all the swans in Boston.”

  Antonio, the private investor, said, “Maybe we should legalize cannabis while we’re at it, you know? This place was one of the firsts that legalized same-sex marriage, it’s time we decriminalized personal amounts of marijuana. I mean, if shit like beast and beauty makes a pussy wet, this country can do better.”

  I put on a shit-eating grin. “I believe it’s Beauty and the Beast, no?” The grin felt foreign after the tension of the past few hours.

  They all guffawed.

  “If I didn’t know you better, I’d say you were a lousy fag,” someone said.

  “Why lousy?” I looked at them dubiously, but no one in particular.

  “You can’t suck cock worth a dime, nitwit.” Tony’s smile lasted all too briefly.

  “I can eat pussy worth it all.” This came with a smile ‘n slurp à la Hannibal Lecter.

  “You’re in luck, Turner. Jane’s meeting a few girls downtown.”

  A waiter who brandished a breadcrumb-remover interrupted us. He decrumbed the table with a gadget that looked like a straight razor, his slow, precision stroke shaving the tablecloth. We all sat in silence, as was the custom of carrying on a conversation under these circumstances. Meanwhile, I tried to drum up some go-go excuse as to why I should meet Daniel’s wife.

  I shouldn’t have bothered. Out of the blue, Daniel threw me the biggest basketball lob pass ever realized. After the flourless chocolate cake with caramel ganache and strawberry coulis, he paid a Robert Parish for the meal, meaning zero. Since he invited us to go see the girls his doting wife was meeting, I took care of it all.

  There was music coming from the lounge. Some whiny, slurry voice I didn’t recognize crooned odious lyrics. Thankfully, the room was full. Polished mahogany, crystal chandeliers, and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto a dark and cold-covered Boston were conducive to classic lounging. So were the leather accent chairs with traditional brass nailhead trim.

  The girls were also-rans and saplings with knobbly knees, except for one. My breath faltered when I saw her. For the first time this week, a smile carrying some emotion spread across my face. It wasn’t good, by any means. Although during my youth and, in a moment of lucidity and reason, I had romanticized the possibility of a soul mate, I’d concluded there was no such thing as a compatible woman for me. There was no yin to my yang, no distinguishable cipher for my puzzle, no Robert Langdon around to solve it.

  But this girl…she was something else.

  In the flesh, Elena was even more wondrous to behold than she was in her photographs and videos, just as I always knew she would be. Girls looked at her with envy and wished they were her, guys looked at her with desire and wished they owned her. Spying her as she sat just a few feet away from me stirred my voyeur’s blood in a way that it hadn’t in longer than I cared to admit.

  I sipped aged malt whiskey, and allowed my eyes to roam over Elena’s exquis
iteness. I couldn’t stop watching her. My future wife, if I played my cards right. Her lips were colored nude, the exact color of her Michael Kors Ionna pumps. Her angel face, neck, and shoulders looked like they were carved from golden oak. I wanted to be on that sofa, within reach of those slender limbs, and the subtle perfume I was so sure she’d doused herself with before leaving the house.

  Shifting in my seat, I adjusted my trousers for good measure for the umpteenth time. I really could have some fun with this girl. She could easily give a young Aishwarya Rai and Monica Bellucci a run for their money. I felt myself stirring again, filling, at just the thought of learning the delightful subtleties and nuances of her mouth.

  I knew I was in over my head. All the intelligence I possessed was dimmed by my starving need for Elena. Most likely I’d latched on to the sight of her pretty face like a pit bull, because Tony jumped me, grabbed hold of my arm and pulled me to my feet. “We’re leaving.” His exit line was slapdash and unoriginal. “Gentlemen, if you’ll all excuse us, my friend here needs to catch a flight.”

  It all happened so fast that Daniel, Antonio, and John could do nothing except wave goodbye as we backpedaled.

  A safe distance later, I said, “C’mon, Tony. I was discreet.”

  “Discreet, Alex?” He snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Hey, over here, buddy. You weren’t eye-fucking Elena Anderson, you were drooling like a newborn puppy! What’s wrong with you tonight?”

  “I want to go back.”

  “Over my dead body, no two ways about it. I think Jane saw you. If she did, she’ll make you pay. I wouldn’t put it past her.”

  The premise left me feeling stupid. “Shit.”

  “I know. Fuck, you look like a desperate man right now, nothing like the-man-on-the-sixtieth-floor.”

  “Look like? Look like, Tony?” I stomped my left foot tersely on the ground. “Love makes men reckless, makes us take risks and make sacrifices! I am a desperate man! ”

  With brow furrowed, he looked at me as though I were a disappointingly slow-learning child. “I know that. You shouldn’t wear a cardboard sign around your neck, though. The truth will out if you overlook good sense. Approach her with good old-fashioned mind games.”

  “I get it.” I nodded appreciatively at his caution. “All grown up. Elena is beautiful, isn’t she?” I struggled to keep my voice even.

  “Totally rung my bell, feels like morning wood down there. I think I might have to rub this one out tonight. How serious are you about keeping her?”

  “As serious as my current boner.”

  “Yeah, tuck that thing. Flying time, sweetie.”

  “I’d like nothing else than having her on call.” I fought hard to keep the distressed expression off my face. “Do me a favor, would you? Not a word about this to Jerry.”

  “About what? I didn’t see nothing.”

  No kidding, he wasn’t lying about catching a flight.

  *

  Tony and I were avid skiers—competition drove us, and we sometimes went to the Tuckerman Ravine during winter. To kick off fall, he took me to Mount Washington to do some hiking & climbing. Exactly, that one mountain that sat at the confluence of three major storm tracks. Have you ever climbed a 6000+ feet mountain in one day? Try to picture the harsh conditions. Rocky trails, in a blink it could start to rain and summer snowfalls weren’t a legend here, wind speed as high as 225 mph. In fact, the weather conditions here were so reliably bad that an official weather observatory had been stationed at the top of the mountain.

  See, I knew you hadn’t. Come along now.

  Driving up Route 16 in Jackson, New Hampshire, we arrived at Pinkham Notch. It felt liberating, in reality, to go somewhere where there were no paparazzi, where people weren’t Lacoste-outfitted and knew how to play lacrosse, where no one gave a fuck whether you had 20 dollars or millions in a well-padded bank account, where you had to demonstrate physical and mental capabilities. Let’s not kid each other, most of the rich don’t know what real sweating means beyond that which forms on their skin during a sauna wellness treatment that’s designed to purify and detoxify the body.

  We set out on the Tuckerman Ravine trail, which started out at 825 feet above sea level and ascended to 6,288 feet. It’d take us five miles to reach the summit. The air was thick with smog and choking humidity, our chests heaved, sweat curling the hair on our necks and beading along our brows. Virtually the entire way, the trail was rocky and, bit by bit I started craving the smooth touch of a woman. Halfway through, a shelter provided a spectacular view of the Tuckerman Ravine. The chance to get rest and fill water bottles was equally spectacular. Then came the difficult part, increased magnitude and a steep trail as if climbing stairs. The pauses to catch our breaths weren’t the right kind. I wished I were pounding some chick, but no, I was out of breath trying to locate colored markers to get to the Headwall instead.

  My body no longer produced energy the way I desired. Endless, stinging pain tickled my stomach and spread across my chest. My arms quivered, my fingers clenching and unclenching as I tried to catch my breath. When I did, I seethed, “Whose stupid idea was it to climb this mountain in one day?” My eyes stung from the sweat that leaked down from my brow. Even though my vision was blurry, through a swath of color I saw Tony come up to me, his hand grabbing the wide lapel of my climbing suit.

  Assuredly, his face was as sweaty as mine. “100 minutes only, shit! We’re still young, aren’t we?” he said between bursts of breath. We were both bent over, hands resting on our knees as we stood there.

  “Young? Look at us, Tony. We’re panting like cheetahs but I ain’t seeing us speeding at 75 mph.”

  He gave me a disgusted look, and because of his beet red face, I found it funny. “That’s it, I’m burning my cigar collection at return.”

  I wanted to laugh, but couldn’t find the energy. “No shit. If I make it, I’ll help. If I don’t, I want to be cremated.”

  Painful chuckles from both of us. It was a perfect moment, though.

  We hit it hard and reached the Tuckerman Junction, an intersection of four trails, and exchanged pleasantries with fellow hikers. Three Québécois, and a recently married couple climbing the mountain as a symbolic ritual before taking steps in their new life.

  “That’s a cool thing to do, isn’t it? I want to climb this mountain with Elena after the nuptials,” I told Tony as we continued.

  “Tacky, tacky, that’s what she’ll say. Modern women want expensive destinations and five-star hotels and spas.”

  The rocky incline didn’t discourage. We pressed on to the summit and when we finally made it, we took celebratory pictures, a few right beside the U.S. Geological Survey marker. I’m not proud to admit it, but we took the one-way ride down. Subsequently, the shower I took was cold, I rested my head against the marbled wall and waited, unmoving. On to the fun part, Tony and I went to a spa for the distorted and sore muscles to be soothed out by lovely, smooth females. To diminish Elena’s memory, I needed to fuck someone. Needed to bury myself in a woman for hours.

  Nothing to write home about, my personal masseuse was sex incarnate. Long raven hair, flawlessly bronzed skin, slender curves, and endless legs. On her knees, doubling her sucking efforts, I should have made her slurp and moan and hum around my shaft. Needy, wanting to please me, her movements felt rehearsed and too greedy and, my dick, which should have been hard enough to cut a diamond, remained borderline flaccid. Shocking, I know.

  I said, “Enough.”

  Pulling back, she let my barely stiffened length fall from her mouth, wiping a string of saliva with the back of her hand. “What’s wrong?”

  I tucked myself back into my trousers, zipped. “I’ve had too much to drink.” Even my voice felt hollow in my chest. Reaching for my jacket, I pulled out the envelope Tony had gifted me for climbing with him, containing 10k in hundred dollar bills. “There you go, sweetheart. For your time.” I tossed it on the massage table beside her. “What do they say about discreti
on?”

  Just as I’d expected, the whore smiled and took the money. Don’t start throwing shoes at me, bitching that I was disrespectful and the like. If a girl wanted me to respect her, she needed to goddamn act like someone worth respecting. You know the adage; all women are liars and whores, some of them are just better spoken and better dressed. This Christian woman was well dressed, and very well spoken. “Practicing the principles of prudence and discretion will keep you in the Lord’s good graces.”

  As for men, we were all sinners, some of us enjoyed it more than others. You already know which category I belong to, don’t you?

  Alexander Turner

  The Man Meets Girl

  The morning light had yet to attack the heavy drapes of my suite when I turned toward the silver numbers of the alarm clock. It was only 2:22 AM, and I was wide-awake. To fight off the cold sweats, I adjusted the covers and hit the button for the climate control. Still couldn’t sleep. Moments later, I sat up, allowing seconds to pass into minutes as I reflected on what to do.

  Within minutes I was heading to the gym room.

  At length I arrived at work, noting with a certain degree of disgust that my gait damnably swerved. I was dead on my feet, suffering a charley horse from the excruciating round of exercise. Done too many oblique crunches.

  It was barely six in the morning. My gaze drifted to the windows and the view of Boston beyond it. I watched, rapt, as a hue of dark crimson streaked Boston’s skyline. No sooner had I sat myself down, yawning leisurely, than my phone rang. With a determined exhalation, I picked up the phone. I’ll be there in an hour, Meredith announced.

  Sophia telephoned me at the same instant I was about to take a small sip of coffee. I knew she was overseas as the LED panel of the phone displayed her French mobile number. I contemplated not answering, then sighed and took one chug of the murky liquid when I reached for the annoying device.