Coconut Grove 

Midnight: crickets. moon, stars; palm and palmetto trees. When I stepped into the bubbling waters of the hotel whirlpool, the temperature was the way I liked it—extra-hot bathwater. 

I was naked with Gabe, a former grad school acquaintance whom I’d run into earlier that day at a conference in Miami Beach. Chatting with him at an after-party, I’d been charmed by his dark hair, athletic build—and dimples—and invited him to go swimming with me at the hotel in Coconut Grove where I was staying. Actually, I’d used the words skinny dipping, since the pools were closed at night and there’d be just the two of us.

I was more like a trespasser than a paying guest. The father of my ex-boyfriend owned the hotel, and I still had a key to the iron gate of the pool area as well as to the father’s tenth-floor office, where I’d planned to spend the night, leaving the key inside with a thank you note. After all, my ex had told me several years ago when he gave me the key that I could use it whenever I wanted to….

God, I love hot tubs, I thought as Gabe and I eased into the hot water and sat down facing each other. Only our heads and necks showed above the bubbles. Hmmm. He’s got strong shoulders. He reminded me of a relaxed tiger. 

I couldn’t see his cock—but I did picture it in my head. My nipples perked up—

I am evil.

I can live with that.

I scooted along the underwater ledge to sit beside him, listening to him talk over the whoosh of the jets. It must have been 1 a.m. I was starting to wonder if he was even interested in me, when he let his feet and legs float, touching mine. What’s next? I asked myself.

What’s next was my every orifice. He had expert, expert fingers. Keep it up, man. Feels great—I’m close—andmy whole body spasmed, washed with waves of lava.

When my breathing calmed down, Gabe’s expression was the small smile of a cat presenting its human with a mouse it has lovingly killed. I felt fond of Gabe; he was turning out to be a dynamite lover. Too bad we lived on opposite coasts of Florida and both had long-time partners. I’d better take advantage, I thought.

We fucked for hours in the hot pool. We also tried doing it on poolside lounge chairs, the diving board, the steps of the regular swimming pool, and the concrete pool deck. 

At dawn, Gabe showered in the office suite and left. I was wiping down the shower walls with paper towels when I heard a key turn. It was the owner of the office and entire hotel, my previous boyfriend’s father. Today of all days, he’d arrived much earlier than his normal time.

I’d always found my ex’s father attractive—he was tall and powerfully built, like my ex. I actually would’ve preferred the father over the son, but had always squashed those thoughts. Screwing around with son and father at the same time had smelled faintly incestuous to me, though I knew it technically wasn’t.

The man’s eyes went wide with surprise when he saw me. He said he’d forgotten that I still had the key—but didn’t seem pissed off. He asked me out to breakfast.

After that, he invited me back to his office. I knew right away that he was going to hit on me and thought once again, I’d better take advantage, but then began to worry: What if his son finds out?

I felt so guilty, I practically couldn’t enjoy it.

Ashley

Situated on the leather bucket seats in the back of Tom Rong’s black ’70 Camaro which he’d bought from some shady customer who’d long since fled the scene. Short-to-midlife-crisis car. The vehicle was basically a teenage boy’s high school wet dream. Truth is Tom Rong never developed past his 17-year-old self he was stuck there in perpetuity unless by the grace of the almighty or perhaps a natural disaster he could transcend his manic state of material attachment. Yeah right. So we’d been drinking. Ashley was crammed in there with me and several other liquored-up bodies, mostly young vixens handpicked by Tom Rong to represent the baby-brothel coke-addled entertainment troupe for our nightly sojourns into depravity and debauch. Ashley was the head cheerleader type grown up into an office girl who still had a figure and wasn’t yet too sloppy but was fairly verging on it. Like I said we were crammed in together thigh to thigh passing around a pipe smoking laughing poking around in the shadowy dark with only the single light pole in the parking lot which was on a sloping hill down to the alley where a rotting fence just managed to support scores of blooming passion flowers. I’d never felt much for Ashley or her bumptious posse the more snide and sneering of us offhandedly referred to as the Spice Girls, a popular girl band from the UK at the time who had a hit single that was played relentlessly for about a month or so before settling forever into obscurity except for the random b-movie soundtrack appearance resurrecting that particular month or so of that particular year ad infinitum concerning one-hit wonders of that stripe. Ashley had big tits that’s how Tom Rong liked ’em. I was more a leg and ass man, to me legs and ass represented motivation, tits were fun to fondle and suck on but they had little purpose for the career bachelor, fertility not being a required option. Ashley’s face musta been quite pudgy as a child but she banked on it. Just another secretary whose office romance appeal was waning before us like the onset of a particularly dull apparition. I’m pretty sure Ashley hated me as well since I generally thumbed my nose at her amateur seductions, yet strangely that night we were getting along fine, wedged in there, juiced and lubricated and hot and electric like it gets in close proximity, but like animals in a cage of different species at a certain point one’s bound to prey on the other. There she was, stinking like a chunk of sexual meat. Her eyes widened as I suddenly kissed her. Ashley didn’t resist and I felt her hands sort of fluttering, but she was basically a cold fish with little to zero lip response, submissive to the point of I’d just as soon osculate with a rubberized mannequin. I didn’t feel even the slightest twinge in my nether regions, so there was that and that wasn’t much. It ended nearly as soon as it started but not before all the other little tramps in the vehicle noticed what had transpired short-lived as it’d been and uneventful in the grand scope of things. I thought nothing of it until the following day arriving at work to prepare pizza for the clamoring tide of a fool’s paradise. Tom Rong glowered at me and wouldn’t speak and from the peripherals of my vision I’d catch him whispering to bar clientele cronies I had no clue as to what and could care less but Tom Rong was not just the bartender but the boss. The night wore on and my usual coveted shift shots of Jägermeister were alarmingly lacking. Tom Rong was looking meaner stony-faced resolute drinking no doubt my shots as well as his own. WTF? We’d always been chummy in a men’s locker-room sort of way. Fuck this noise I said to myself and took a break to hustle across the street to the Greek’s for a couple quick shots. After shift I perched at the bar but Tom Rong’s ignorance of my presence was so obvious it verged on comical. Staring at NBA highlights oblivious to the empty space on the bar before me. Well shit. Amy the waitress another objectified princess of Tom Rong’s priapic selection nudged me. Tom told me not to serve you. Fuck sakes, I said, need I ask why? Did his dog die? Amy slitted her slant cat-eyes and strutted away. You’d need a trowel to remove the make-up she’d caked on her face. Just how Tom Rong liked ’em. Busty strippers-in-training. Get ’em coked up and drunk and stick a wet finger in their ears. Tom Rong white male wiry and tall with a goofy kid’s face and big nose smiling like a silly idiot with his hand caught in the cookie jar. But I underestimated his dormant fury and though he was married with two kids his envy had reached nuclear accident levels and suddenly I was on the floor of the bar being dragged by the coat collar. Unprecedented behavior from the boss, but I was not compliant, in fact I didn’t give a fucking shit, and even outweighed by a good fifty pounds I had Tom Rong down on the floor beside me in seconds, applying the ol’ pressure-point disarmament technique I picked up from a Shiatsu monk several lives previous. Tom Rong, incapacitated. I took the opportunity to slam his head against the floor once, twice, and was holding it up by the hair to slam it again, since three’s a charm, when Tom Rong tapped out. Sweet surrender, is what it was. That Ashley, I hissed, can’t even kiss properly, motherfucker. The next day Tom Rong had a shiner for each eye like some kinda mutant raccoon. Get out! he yelled and pointed to the front door but was forced to relent knowing there was nobody else to throw dough that night or for that matter the entire weekend to come. But Tom Rong never really recovered from this phantom betrayal and the animosity grew to a rather persistently uncomfortable nadir until one sunless day I simply didn’t show up for work and thus never returned. Luckily right around that time my mother died leaving me to inherit tens of thousands of dollars which I managed to pay rent, buy food and get drunk on for nearly a decade. That tart Ashley. She didn’t even offer me her tongue. Maybe she had herpes.

In the Dying Embers

Then she asked the inevitable question, “Do I know any of your books?”

“No,” I said.

She twirled a finger on the rim of her wine glass. “Well, what do you write about?”

I picked up my half-empty shot glass and downed the contents. It was filled again as soon as it hit the well-worn mahogany. I nodded at her glass. It was still full.

“Want another?”

“Well, I don’t know yet, do I?” she said coyly in a schoolgirl voice.

“How old are you?” I blurted out.

She stopped the rim-twirling and stared at me.

“What a rude question! A gentleman wouldn’t ask a lady that.”

I focused on my shot glass. It was filled to the brim. He’s my kind of bartender, Doug is.

I picked it up and rested it on my lower lip for a second. “I’m no gentleman,” I said, and threw my head back, feeling that old familiar burn traveling down my esophagus. “Are you a lady?”

She dropped her jaw with poorly feigned indignation. “You’re an asshole!”

“Hey!” Doug barked, strolling towards us from the opposite end of the bar where he’d been attending to a couple of the other regulars. He picked up my bottle and poured it. “There are no assholes in here, miss.”

Doug was right – at least for another half hour – then the assholes would begin streaming in from the surrounding office buildings. For now, it was just the regulars, five or six of us, and these three girls who had wandered in from out of nowhere – two of them sipping spritzers by the jukebox – and this one, who had seen fit to plunk herself down next to me trying to start up a conversation. I’d bought her a white wine spritzer – like a gentleman – which she was nursing with remarkable patience.

“Women,” I said, as she took a sip.

“I’m sorry, what?” she said, looking at me, holding her glass in midair.

“I write about women.”

She took another quick sip. “Why? Do you like women?”

“I hate them,” I said.

She put the drink down. Too gently. “You really are an asshole!” she said in a loud whisper, first making sure Doug wasn’t within earshot – then shifted her weight around the barstool for several seconds. We both knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She grabbed her glass and, for the first time, took a proper gulp. Good girl! When she’d apparently found a comfortable sitting position, she looked into my eyes, “Has anyone ever told you, you look like Kelsey Grammer?”

I’m usually pretty quick, but had no immediate reply to that one.

She turned to her girlfriends by the jukebox. “Mona! Molly! Look over here!” she yelled, pointing at me. “Doesn’t he look like Kelsey Grammer?”

The two girls looked over briefly, gave their friend a thumbs-up, and returned to whatever they were doing.

“You see! They agree, you do look like Kelsey Grammer!”

“Is that a good thing?” I asked.

“He’s handsome,” she said – adding, “in a sorta, kinda way.”

“Then sorta, kinda thank you.” I raised my glass and she extended hers.

“Cheers!” she laughed. “Cheers,” I said – struggling to muzzle a smile which made her laugh even more.

“See!” she said, “that wasn’t so hard, was it? My name is Jenny.”

I told her mine.

She wasn’t a bad looking woman – one of those bleached blondes you can’t avoid bumping into all over New Jersey and Southern California – the kind you’d have a hard time telling apart if you lined them up. They’re probably everywhere by now, and for good reason. Men love them. I’m no exception. Those blonde locks and curls make ordinary girls look slutty, and slutty girls, sluttier. This one – Jenny – did have some distinguishing features, most notably, no tits. Not a disqualifier in my book – on the contrary. Her upper arms were, however, problematic. They had the circumference of a dwarf’s thighs, and looked like them, too – meaty, but not muscular – the kind of upper arms you’d expect on a baker’s daughter who’s been kneading and stuffing down dough her entire life. She was wearing a white sleeveless cotton shirt which only added to their humongous-ness. But her face was both cute and sexy, although not at the same time. When she opened her mouth to drink, she’d twitch her nose like an adorable bunny rabbit. When she sat just observing, or in quiet contemplation, she looked eminently beddable. A cute and sexy face covers up a lot of flaws. Except for the arms, I didn’t detect any. I wondered what her legs were like under the loose flannel pants she was wearing.

I’m not much of a talker and we soon ran out of conversation. She’d gotten more and more jittery and distracted as the bar had begun to fill up with assholes. It would soon reach maximum capacity and stay that way for a couple of hours. Doug was earning a living.

Jenny thanked me for the drink – like a lady – and left to join her girlfriends. A little while later, the three of them were next to me. The room had gotten loud and overcrowded. A desperate horde, vying for Doug’s attention, was pressing up against those of us lucky enough to have a seat at the bar.

“Nice not meeting you!” one of Jenny’s girlfriends yelled, and squeezed past me.

Ah, a joker! I wish you’d been the one who’d come and sat next to me, I thought. Female jokers are so rare. “Likewise!” I yelled.

“Thanks again for the drink!” Jenny smiled and extended a hand. I gave her a wink and a thumbs up, and wondered if I might have misjudged her.

Then the second girlfriend was up against me and yelled straight into my ear, “JENNY LIKES ASSHOLES! OLD ASSHOLES, PREFERABLY!”

Perplexed, I watched the three of them shove their way through the thirsting herd. Someone opened and closed the front door, and I regretted my passivity. Not for the first time in my life. I looked at the bottle – my bottle – sitting on the shelf directly in front of me. I still had almost two-thirds to go and there was always a backup in case of an emergency. Soon the assholes would leave, except a few who were training to become like me and, in a few years, were likely to succeed. It was them and me, and the other regulars, for the rest of the night. Groups continued to drop in – ordered cocktails and wine, huddled somewhere in the barroom, made a lot of noise – then left. The hours got short and no one came in, save for a few lost souls in search of a watering hole to call home.

At some point Doug told me, my bottle had run dry. I paid, shook his hand, and said tomorrow. He nodded, and I walked out into an oppressively hot and eerily quiet Midtown Manhattan. I made my way down the block on the water sprinklered sidewalk, to my apartment, where I kicked off my shoes and opened a bottle.

Maybe I shouldn’t have lied about being a writer. Ah, so what, I’d never see her again anyway. I closed my eyes and downed another, simultaneously kindling and quenching the dying embers.