Aftermath

by Ann McMan

  Syd climbed off the bed and walked to stand beside her. She was barefoot, and her head barely reached Maddie’s collarbone. The white robe she was wearing looked cavernous on her. It drooped off one shoulder in a very provocative way.

  “You’re a sharp young woman, Lu,” Syd said. Maddie was startled when she felt Syd’s fingers stroking up and down her arm. “And I’m sure you understand how much I want to be alone with this tall drink of water.” Syd slapped Maddie on the butt.

  Maddie jumped, startled.

  Lu looked back and forth between them.

  “Oh. Sure.” She cleared her throat. “Yeah. I get it.” She backed toward the door. “You’ve got my numbers. Just let me know if you need anything.”

  “Oh, trust me, Lu,” Syd ran her hand inside the folds of Maddie’s robe, “I have everything I need right here.”

  Lu backed into a suitcase stand and nearly knocked it over. She righted it and quickly reached the door.

  “I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay,” she said over her shoulder. She was already halfway out the door.

  “I am sure we will,” Syd replied in her sweetest voice. “Oh, and Lu?”

  Lu turned back toward them.

  “Let us know if anyone complains about the noise, okay?” She dropped her voice to a whisper and tipped her head toward Maddie. “She’s a screamer.”

  Lu opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came out. She nodded at Syd with a glazed expression, retreated to the safety of the corridor, and closed the door behind her.

  Maddie drew back and looked at Syd with wonder. “Are you nuts? What the hell was that little performance about?”

  Syd looked around the room. “Do you see Lu in here?”

  “Of course not.”

  “I rest my case.”

  Maddie was exasperated. “Honey . . . She now thinks that I’m some kind of nymph, and that you’re the female equivalent of Larry Flynt.”

  Syd rolled her eyes. “I’d hardly go that far.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Why do you always have to overstate everything?”

  “I won’t dignify an overstated question like that with a response.”

  Syd stood in front of her with her hands on her hips. “Explain to me why you care so much about what a twenty-something, baby butch thinks about your sainted reputation?”

  “Syd. She’s just a kid.”

  Syd jerked a hand toward the door. “Lu? Kid?”

  Maddie nodded.

  “You really need to take two reality pills and call me in the morning.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you honestly have no clue that Little Lulu was up here to audition for a starring role in tonight’s Dunhill ménage à trois?”

  “I think she was being overly friendly, but I wouldn’t say there was anything demonstrably inappropriate about her appearance here.”

  Syd shook her head. “Honey, you’d say that even if she had offered to shuck off her polyester pants and do a lap dance on your face.”

  Maddie took a deep breath. “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

  “I’m being ridiculous?” Syd pointed a finger at her own chest.

  Maddie nodded. “I’d say so, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Lu wasn’t wearing polyester pants. They were a cotton blend.”

  Syd dropped her chin to her chest. “You are so spending too much time with David.”

  “That may be true, but it’s entirely due to events outside my control.”

  “Well, maybe you should try concentrating on events that are within your control.”

  Maddie raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”

  Syd sighed. “You really make me crazy.”

  “Isn’t that my job?”

  “Nope.” Syd grabbed the front of her robe and tugged her forward. “Your job is to drive me crazy.”

  Maddie gave her a crooked smile. “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “Nuh uh.”

  “Care to explain the difference?”

  Syd sighed. “You medical types are all about empirical verification.”

  “Well,” Maddie backed her toward the bed, “results do need to be repeatable to have integrity.”

  Syd grabbed Maddie’s posterior with both hands. “I think I can ensure enough redundancy to satisfy your need for a consistent outcome.”

  Maddie pushed her down onto the bed. “Talk is cheap.”

  “What a coincidence . . .” Syd shifted a hand around and manipulated some very sensitive territory. “So am I.”

  Maddie jerked about a foot into the air. “Holy shit!”

  “Like that?” Syd asked.

  Maddie gasped.

  “Then you’ll love this.” Syd added some creative improvisation to her ministrations.

  “You’re . . . not . . . wasting . . . any . . . time . . .” Maddie panted against Syd’s ear.

  Syd bit down on Maddie’s bare shoulder. “I think we’ve already wasted enough time . . . don’t you?”

  Maddie pushed up on her forearms to grant Syd better access. “Good god, baby.”

  Syd kissed her way up Maddie’s long neck. “You’re so damn beautiful.”

  “Too much,” Maddie gasped.

  Syd reached Maddie’s lips. “Too much?” she whispered against them.

  “Talking.” Maddie gave her an incendiary kiss. “Too much talking.”

  She got no argument from Syd, who happily applied herself to another form of oral argument.

  DARRYL HUFFED HIS way back down the long corridor.

  If they ever stayed here again, he was going to ask for a room closer to the goddamn ice machine.

  Not that staying here again would be very likely. Shit. This damn room on the eighth floor was costing him three hundred smackers. Three hundred fucking bucks just so they could be in the middle of Uptown for Speed Weekend.

  Goddamn loan sharks. They probably tripled their rates for this weekend.

  But his wife got off on how impressive it was to stay at the “best” hotel in Charlotte. He didn’t really care. He just hoped that this year’s race would be better than last year’s. Last year after six hundred damn miles, that cooter, Junior, ran out of gas on the final fucking lap.

  Asshole.

  Darryl stopped to indulge in a coughing fit.

  About a quarter of the ice cubes in his bucket broke free and dropped out as he stood there next to a wall-mounted fire extinguisher, hacking away. He cleared his throat and kicked the loose cubes off to the side before continuing on his way.

  He needed a cigarette, but, of course, their room was on one of the candyass nonsmoking floors. What kind of crap was that—a hotel in damn Charlotte with nonsmoking rooms?

  He shook his head.

  So far, this trip really sucked.

  “Sweet Jesus!” Somebody yelled. It was a woman’s voice, and she sounded anything but unhappy.

  Darryl stopped dead in his tracks and backed up a step. What the hell? The sound was coming from behind one of the big, wooden doors. He looked up and down the hallway. When he was sure that no one else was in sight, he leaned closer to the door.

  “Sid . . . oh, god, baby . . .”

  Darryl chuckled. At least somebody was having a good time.

  Another muttered “Oh, god,” was followed by a loud, piercing cry. Startled, Darryl jerked back from the door and lost a few more cubes. At this rate, he’d be out of fucking ice before he got back to the room.

  “Sid!” the woman shrieked again, then fell silent.

  Darryl was impressed. Somebody sure as hell parted the beef curtains.

  He stood there outside room 814, eavesdropping for another full minute, but things inside had quieted down. He was tempted to tap on the door and give this Sid dude a high five.

  Smiling, he hitched his ice bucket up closer to his chest and continued on his way.

  Maybe staying here wasn’t such a bad idea after all.


  Chapter 17

  CELINE WAS SITTING at the big kitchen table, reviewing abstracts of bioresearch papers submitted by her graduate students. So far, most of them were pretty tired retreads of pop-culture topics. She tossed another one onto the “come and see me about this” stack. It was the third proposal dealing with an exploration of the root causes of childhood obesity.

  She glanced down at the title of the next abstract in her pile: Anesthesia Management During Pneumonectomy.

  Okay. This one might have some potential.

  She was halfway through the first page when she realized that someone had entered the kitchen and was standing just behind her.

  “Do you need something, sweetheart?” she asked, without turning around. She assumed it was Henry.

  “Well . . . um . . .” It was David.

  Celine turned in her seat to look at him. He was standing near the door to the dining room and holding several sheets of white paper.

  “You’re busy,” he said. “I don’t want to bother you.”

  “No. It’s fine. I needed a break from this.” She gestured toward her own stack of papers. “Most of these would make better sleep aids than research topics. What do you need?”

  “Well . . .” David cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask if you were, maybe . . . sort of . . . fluent—in German?”

  “German?”

  He nodded.

  She took off her reading glasses. “Reading it, or writing it?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She smiled. “I can read and write it fairly well, but my spoken accent leaves a lot to be desired.”

  He walked to the table and sat down on a chair beside her.

  “It’s like this. I’ve been working on this fundraising project—you know . . . for the storm recovery effort?” He ran a hand through his thick, dark hair. “And part of that involves translating some German . . . prose.” He sighed. “I’ve tried to use some of the reference books in Maddie’s library, and some of the online resources that are available. You know . . . things like Google Translator? But, trust me, that one’s about as useful as a diet crouton.”

  “Google Translator?” Celine was unfamiliar with that service.

  “Oh, yeah.” David exhaled and waved a hand in frustration. “I mean, if all you want is to figure out how to ask something like ‘where’s the bathroom?’ in Farsi—it might be just the thing. But it’s next to worthless for a literary endeavor like this one.”

  “A literary endeavor?” she asked.

  “Right. A literary endeavor.” He reordered the papers in his hands. “So . . . for example. What might be some German words for . . . um . . . rooster?”

  “Rooster?”

  He nodded. “May I borrow this?” He picked up one of her red pens and held it poised above his top sheet of paper.

  “Well,” Celine sat back against her chair, “it kind of depends on the context of the sentence. How is the word being used?”

  He thought about that. “As a noun?”

  “I gathered that much. What is the context of the sentence? Is the term being used literally or euphemistically?”

  He looked distressed.

  “David, I don’t think ‘rooster’ has a direct equivalent in German.”

  He glanced down at his papers.

  Celine was beginning to get an idea about where this was going. “Why don’t you just show me what you’re working on, and we’ll take it from there?”

  He demurred. “I’m not really sure . . .”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, David.” Celine snagged his top sheet of paper. “You’re worse than my first-year med students.”

  She put on her glasses and read over the short translation.

  It’s hard tail thumped painfully, like Tobi knelt before it.

  Rolf groaned. As a Tobi, Rolf rooster pushed it into the

  hot damp depth of its mouth, geknebelt onto its Massivität.

  She reread it several times, then blinked and looked up at David.

  “Rolf rooster?” she asked, in her driest, most professorial voice.

  David looked like he wanted to sink beneath the tile floor of the kitchen.

  “This is what you have so far?” she asked.

  David nodded.

  Celine sighed and held out a hand. “Let me see the original text.”

  Dumbly, David handed it over.

  Geschichte von Rolf und Tobi

  Zwei heiße Bauerjungen erste Fahrt im Zug.

  Kapital 24

  Sein harter Schwanz pochte schmerzhaft, wie Tobi knealt

  vor ihm. Rolf stöhnte. Als Tobi schob Rolf Hahn in die heiße

  feuchte Tiefen seines Mundes, geknebelt er auf seiner Massivität.

  Als, der Zug

  “I’m not even going to ask where you got this,” she said, after she finished reading it.

  He shrugged. “It’s German . . . um . . . fan fiction.”

  “Fan fiction?”

  David nodded. “It’s posted for free on the Internet. I contacted the author of this series—a guy named Wilhelm Wotan—and he gave me permission to use it. Unfortunately, Wilhelm doesn’t write in English very well, so I’m on my own with the translation.” He sighed. “It’s supposed to be the hottest series going across the pond.”

  Celine looked at him over the rim of her glasses. “It’s a series?”

  David gave her an energetic nod.

  She looked back down at the paper in her hands. “This is really appalling.”

  David’s face fell. “I didn’t mean to offend you . . .”

  “Oh, no . . . not your idea. I mean this.” She pointed at a line of text on the page. “Kapital 24?”

  David shook his head.

  “Chapter 24. This . . . prose work actually has twenty-four chapters?” She shook her head. “That’s what I find appalling.”

  She held out a hand. “May I?”

  David handed her the red pen.

  Celine quickly worked on top of David’s haphazard translation. The only sound in the room was the scratch of her pen across the paper. When she finished, she held up the page.

  “It’s not perfect, but I think you can at least get the gist of the story.”

  David reached out to take it from her, and she pulled it back and held up an index finger. “If you ever tell anyone that I helped you with this, I will deny it until my dying day, and I will cut you out of my will so fast it will make your best bow tie spin like a top.”

  David sat, staring at her. “I’m in your will?”

  Celine rolled her eyes and handed him the paper.

  The Story of Rolf and Tobi

  Two hot farm boys’ first ride on a train.

  Chapter 24

  His cock was hard and throbbing when Tobi knelt before

  him. Rolf groaned. Tobi shoved Rolf’s cock deep into his

  hot, wet mouth and choked on its massiveness.

  David looked up at her with excitement.

  “My, god. This is fantastic, Celine.”

  He reread it.

  “Wow,” he said. “This Wotan dude really can write. I knew this was a brilliant idea. Move over Armistead Maupin. Here come the Huns.”

  “I don’t think I’d go quite that far,” Celine began.

  “No . . . you’re wrong. This is Bavarian gold.”

  “David . . .”

  “We’re going to have to talk international distribution rights.”

  “David . . .”

  “And film rights, too.” He scratched his chin. “I wonder if Jake Gyllenhaall is looking for another crossover hit?”

  “David—seriously. You’re going to have to find another ghost translator. I’m heading back to L.A. next week.”

  His face fell. “Next week?”