I should have written this last night, but the headache intervened.
When the first day arrived, I showed up early, all dressed up in one of my new suits, one of my ridiculously expensive shirts, and a dark blue tie. I had the cell phone bluetooth headset stuck in my ear, and my wicked little ninja tool in my pocket. I felt ready for whatever the hell this job was going to be. My spot next to the door was waiting, and the hostess, a girl named Arianna, looked very good in a littl black dress. Mr. Rich was waiting for us, and he immediately pulled me aside.
“I have some more employees arriving this evening. They will be staying here for the weekend before going back home. You’ll need to meet their car and unload their baggage,” he told me. I nodded but wondered what sort of club hired employees who came in on the weekends and then went back to wherever they came from.
I figured that out soon enough as my headset buzzed in my ear. The car had arrived, so I had to get to work. The car, a huge Lincoln Continental with New York plates, was waiting by the back door, and three women got out. They were all wearing form-fitting dresses that showed off their assets, and they all looked like models. Hell, for all I knew, they were models. The driver, a tough looking black dude in a black suit, black shirt, and black tie, opened the trunk for me and then stood aside. “Have a nice drive up?” I asked him.
He lowered his dark sunglasses and looked at me over the tops. “Man, I don’t get paid to have a nice time driving them. And if I want to keep, you know, everything”–he made a brief gesture at his crotch–“I don’t notice anything, know what I’m saying?”
“Gotcha,” I said and pulled the three small suitcases out of the trunk and carried them inside and up to the third floor rooms that Mr. Rich had indicated. The job was off to a good start. I knew what I was supposed to do: I was hired labor. It wasn’t much different than what I was used to doing, except this was a lot cleaner than hauling rocks and I was getting paid a lot more.
Soon, as dusk fell, a few cars drove up, rich-looking guys got out, and the cars drove on. Several guys, usually driving expensive sports cars, drove themselves and parked in teh lot behind the place. They were all a lot like Mr. Rich–fiftyish, wearing expensive suits, and looking like they knew how to handle themselves in almost any social situation. Some of them gathered in the main downstairs room, where waitresses–not the women who had arrvied in the Lincoln, by the way–circled with trays of fancy finger foods and glasses filled with high-powered liquor, definitely not the kind of stuff you would get at the tavern. A few more sat around a table in one of the smaller rooms, and I could hear the banter and laughter of a card game coming from that room shortly afterward.
The women didn’t make an appearance until later in the evening. They came downstairs and made themselves at home in the overstuffed chairs. I was circulating through the downstairs rooms at this point just to make sure everything looked quiet and sophisticated as Mr. Rich wanted, and I got a good look at the floor show. One of the women, a beauty with long, flowing chestnut hair and a deep blue dress that revealed a lot of the smoothest cleavage a man could ever hope to see, leaned forward to laugh at the lame joke of one of the guys. Another woman, this one a strawberry blond in dark green and skin so pale and translucent it looked like something only an angel could get away with having, seemed to be hanging on every word one of the suits was saying. I caught a snatch of the conversation, and he seemed to be entertaining her with some tale of his business exploits. I only heard a few words but I could tell teh story was boring as hell. If nothing else, these women were damned good actresses.
The third woman was seated in another cluster of chairs near the fireplace. She had long, straight, shiny hair as black as satan’s sin, and a blood red dress of some clingy material. It was clingy enough that I could tell that she wasn’t wearing a bra, and I remembered the driver’s warning and quickly looked away. I glanced back, though, becasue I could tell something was wrong. She was not laughing and playing up to the guy the way the other women were. Instead, she seemed to be trying not to show the shock on her face as her companion leaned in and leered. He had a grip on her forearm and his fingers seeme to be digging into her flesh. I backed into a dark alcove where I could be unobtrusive but still see what was going on.
The leering ape was one of the guys who had driven himself, I recalled, and it was a car that I was not likely to forget. We see a lot of fancy sports cars up here–we’re not all that far from the Lime Rock race course, and most of the second home businessmen up here seem to own stock in Porsche–but this car stood out. It was a low-slung Lamborghini in what one of my friends down at the tavern would have called “pussy magnet yellow.” In other words, it was a huge, fast, very bright sign saying the guy driving it was an asshole. I hadn’t like him when he came in, and now, seeing the way he was acting, I liked him even less. I reached into my pocket and felt the reassurance of my ninja tool.
The ape had released her forearm but grabbed her other hand when she made a move to stand up. He pulled her back into the cozy loveseat they were sharing. I could see, even from across the room, the tendons in his hand stand out as he squeezed her hand. She seemed to let out a little whimper, but I couldn’t hear it over the low rumble of conversation and tastefully piped-in classical music. He reached into his pocket with his other hand and pulled out something I couldnt’ see, though I did catch a glint of light on something shiny. He held whatever it was on the back of her hand and made a small, quick gesture and the woman flinched and bit her lip. He grinned and leaned back so I could see a small trickle of blood flowing down her hand. The next thing he did turned my stomach. He pulled her hand to his mouth and sucked up the blood, still grinning.
The woman turned her head to the side and looked like she might be sick. His hand shot out–the hand with what must have been some sort of small blade–and caressed her cheek. His fingers did some sort of twinkling trick and the blade flashed again. A thin line of red appeared along that perfect jaw. The woman got up quietly and strode out of the room. the other women glanced up, but they were paying too much attention to their customers to see much. The ape got up and walked quickly after her. I stepped in behind him, very quietly.
He caught her just as she was about to go up the stairs and grabbed her by the wrist. Now that they were out of earshot of the others, the woman felt more bold and she hissed, “Let me go!”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you knwo I’m paing for whatever I want, you stupid cunt?” He flourished the blade and looked like he was aiming for her face again.
He never made the cut. I grabbed his wrist with my left hand and pulled him around som he was facing me. His eyes were startled, but that lasted only a second. I popped him in the solar plexus with my wicked little tool, and his eyes lost their look of surprise and rolled back in his head. I caught him before he could hit the floor and dragged him into the little control room with the video displays and dropped him into a chair.
In a few minutes, he sputtered back into consciousness. “What the fuck–?” he managed to say before groaning in pain and pulling up his shirt to reveal two little puncture marks from the prongs of my ninja weapon. I was also happy to see a huge, spreading bruise forming. He looked up at me. “Are you the mother fucker who did this to me?”
I stepped closer and showed him what was in my fist. “That’s right. If you give me any more trouble, I’ll pop you in the throat next time, got it?” The cheap bravado left his eyes and his lip trembled. Behind me, I heard the door open.
“Thank you, Calvin, I’ll handle it from here,” Mr. Rich said, patting me on the shoulder. “Please see if you can get some bandages and antiseptic for Miss Lucas.”
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