Killing The Sun: Part 1 Page 5

  “You got a point,” he shoots back as he crosses the hall.

  She had one of those fresh smiles that right away told you she wasn’t from the city. You could almost smell the innocence on her and it smelled like it came from heaven. Or at least from some place really clean with no subway, no dirty gutters, no junkies, no prostitutes hanging out on the corner—a place full of meadows and wildflowers, sweet grass and streams.

  She posed for his camera and anyone looking could tell that she was pretty amateur. But the asshat photographing her was giving feedback like she was Cindy Crawford. I immediately felt protective, like I didn’t want this piece of shit anywhere near her. The loser drove her down to DUMBO to take shots in a wasteland. “It’ll look so hip, your soft face against this hardened background!” I could practically hear the SOB saying it. I had my own fucking sleaze meter to read him. I grew up in Bay Ridge in the early seventies—I knew bullshit when I saw it, don’t even try to fuck with me.

  “Didn’t see the no trespassing sign?” I asked as I approached them. I threw down my cigarette and put it out with my boot. I got here just in time; five minutes later and he would have been taking the pictures with her clothes off.

  “Uh, no. We, uh . . . I come here all the time,” he said, stammering. Fucking lowlife scum. Preying on young girls, as if this city alone weren’t enough to eat them alive.

  “I’ve never seen you here before,” I said as I exhaled a line of smoke. “Kind of funny, I’d say, considering I own this whole yard.”

  He started to pack up his equipment and stumbled, throwing her a bright yellow sweater that he’d already managed to get her out of.

  “Put this on!” he scolded loudly, as if authority over her would give him some power.

  “Get the fuck outta here,” I said in fluent Brooklynese. I didn’t often go down there, but for some reason I felt compelled to that day.

  “We’re going,” he said, grabbing her perfectly pale arm aggressively.

  “Leave the lady with me,” I said, and I widened my stance.

  They both froze automatically like they knew I carried a piece. It wasn’t what they were expecting, but I wanted her to stay.

  “I said, leave the lady with me.”

  I could have pulled out my gun and really scared them if I wanted to.

  Her mouth dropped open in shock and she silently shook her head. She had chub to her cheeks and the sweet, round face of an angel. She was a ray of sunshine on that gray day. A bright spot in an otherwise dingy, industrial container yard.

  “I’ll take you home,” I said, shrugging casually to her. “I got no plans of roughing you up, but I can’t say the same for this worm. Seen his face on the daily sex offender alert.”

  The worm took off running and it confirmed my suspicions. Photos to get her into bed and then sell the shots on the Internet. She was timid when she got into my car and I offered her a bottle of water. She whispered, “Thank you,” when she took it and somehow the words broke my heart. It was water and she was grateful. I could tell from just looking that she was gentle and kind. I got from the bit of background that she gave me that she was also pretty damn smart.

  She told a long story of her waitressing jobs and getting fired. She answered an ad for photos because she was struggling with her bills. New to the city and clueless, a vulnerable target.

  I dropped her off in Queens at her shitty apartment. What I really wanted to do was drag her back to my place and bang her, get my hands on those tits.

  “Listen, Aimee, what’s your last name?”

  “Olsen. Aimee Olsen,” she said. Big blues blinking innocently. Didn’t have a clue how irresistible she was to men.

  Goddamn, she was a catch and she didn’t even know it.

  “Aimee Olsen, you’re young and beautiful and new to this place. I don’t want people taking advantage of you or steering you in the wrong direction. Why don’t you come by my midtown offices tomorrow and we’ll see if we can’t get you an administrative position?”

  “Seriously?” she said, her concern giving way to a luminous smile.

  “I got your back, kid. I’m not a bad guy. I’m one of the good ones.”

  Those words played tricks on me and I left his car feeling smitten. I clutched my yellow sweater and the bottle of water he gave me and ran up the stairs to my first New York apartment. Fuck fifty dollars for some photos, fuck bartending and waitressing. I was going to have a real job and I’d just made my first real New York connection.

  Montclair Industries was its own building and I was intimidated just walking inside. Danny looked down to earth at the shipyard but in a suit he was terrifying. He lost the accent, the street swagger, and he embodied something else entirely. He was a master of disguise and in me, he had a completely captivated audience.

  They set me up with a desk, a phone and a computer within minutes and then before I knew it, Danny was already telling me to take a lunch break. I wandered around midtown taking in the huge buildings and the bustle. Sat in a crowded atrium and downed a giant chocolate shake from McDonalds. Then he called me on my cell phone while I was sitting there dreaming. I thought I was in trouble, that I’d been given the boot before I even really got started.

  “Hello?”

  “Aimee?”

  “Danny? I mean, Mr. Montclair. Did I take too long?”

  “Not at all. I just wanted to see how it was going.”

  “Oh, everything is perfect so far. I can’t wait to get started!”

  “Why don’t you come up to my office around five-thirty and I’ll give you a full tour of the place? I can drive you home afterwards, too.”

  “Oh, okay, I’d love that! If it’s not too much trouble.”

  I’m feeling as light as air as I walk to work, due to a good night’s sleep, delicious breakfast and even better coffee. Plus, I’ve got a date with Danny tonight; he’s taking me to see a show. Then dinner, probably drinks and a whole night of lovemaking. It almost tires me out just thinking about it. I’m wearing a pale cream-colored shift that hugs me just right and some killer black heels that will later get me called into his office. I know how he works—exactly what turns him on. I’ve spent all of my young adult years studying rigorously for the final test, which is being this man’s lover and fulfilling his every wish.

  It’s not something that will show up on a résumé or give any real life experience, but it’s the job I accepted so I do my very best at it.

  I waltz into his office feeling like a million bucks. He’s at his huge desk, the top buttons of his dress shirt undone. Stress is written all over his face. This doesn’t bode well for tonight, and I stifle a sigh.

  He brings his finger to his lips and signals silence. He’s talking to his wife. This is the only circumstance in which he demands silence from me.

  I plop my generous ass down on his desk and take out my phone to start reading the newspaper.

  “Did they bring the new feeding tube?”

  One of Danny’s kids is disabled, born with a heart and lung defect, which left him severely retarded. This is part of why he’ll never leave his wife. They are both too committed to the common cause that is caring for their son. Of course she doesn’t do it herself—they have around the clock care—but she’s the one who organizes it all and has put a stop on her life to take care of his. His health is fragile and the boy is always a sensitive topic. All she has to do is bring him up and Danny caves to whatever her need or wish is.

  He signals with his hand for me to make him a coffee. His hands are big and soft; despite working in the shipping industry his hands are not those of a manual laborer. His are hairy and boast a thick, gold signet on one pinkie.

  I bring him a coffee, a latte with no foam. He pats my ass as I set it down for him and lets his fingers trail down my thigh over my stockings. I look out the window onto midtown Manhattan—there’s so much out there. But I limit myself to this for now. I could look for another job, but I’d have to start at the very bottom and
crawl my way out of the ranks with only work skills to help me. Not connections all the way to the top, like I have at Montclair.

  Money. Maybe it’s the reason I can’t leave Danny or Montclair. Maybe it’s not about love but rather my attachment to the green stuff.

  When he hangs up, he pats his lap and I really don’t feel like sitting in it, but I oblige and sit down and his hands fawn all over me. He likes this dress, he likes my perfume, he’s even familiar with my lace underwear. Because he’s trained me well, I’m nothing more than a reflection of his desires. An investment, his own personal sex toy that he put a lot of time into creating, honing a lover who is one hundred percent dependent on him. But I’m not entirely blind to the manipulation; I have investments of my own. I too have been creative.

  He circles the cloth over my nipples with a skirt of his fingernail. My nipple hardens through the fabric and I immediately feel his cock twitch against my thigh through his silk-blend trousers. This dress is coming off in a matter of seconds. It’s like clockwork. It’s like gravity. It’s absolutely dependable. I know this relationship so well I could do it all in my sleep.

  Danny caresses the back of my neck before he pulls the zipper down, then undoes my bra strap as soon as his fingers skim it. When my breasts are free, his hands snake around my stomach and find their way to my nipples. He tugs them and rolls them between his pointer and middle fingers. Then he quickly presses down on the intercom and barks, “Leslie, no phone calls!”

  Within five minutes my hands are grabbing the far side of the desk, my breasts squished against his open planner. My dress has been hiked up around my waist and my underwear peeled down to hover at my ankles. He doesn’t take his clothes off, just unzips his cock free and fucks me from behind. After six years of this, it doesn’t feel sordid; it’s more like morning exercise. He slaps my ass as he pounds me and I know it’s loud enough for others to hear. But Danny’s been fucking me for so long that no one around here fucking cares.

  It dawns on me, that last night with Wade, when we were each petting a cat simultaneously, this is the job he was referring to. The one he suggested I leave. These are the types of things I process while Danny slams into me with thrusts that border on aggression.

  His body slaps into mine with jarring force that produces an unpleasant sound. His hands fly from my hips to grip the edge of the desk. He pulls out right before he comes and his hot semen hits my ass. I can feel it slipping down my crack and I instinctively cup my sex to prevent his come from hitting it. He groans like he’s satisfied and his hairy hand reaches around to finger my nipple. I want him to get off me but I stay still until he’s ready. He chuckles a little, running his fingers up my slit, collecting his own body fluid. In an unexpected gesture, he suddenly slaps a hand covered in his jizz across my mouth. I open to his fingers as he hand-fucks my mouth with the evidence of his pleasure. Gripping the desk tighter, I do everything I can to not gag. He wipes again and repeats—he’s making me eat it, doing it because he knows I don’t like it.

  “Eat it, Sunshine. Be a good girl.”

  Not that Danny has always been a prince, but he was never quite sadistic. He’s not usually this porn star, not usually this vindictive—with me at least, I don’t know about his adversaries. But Danny is angry that I had the nerve to walk away and he’s hell-bent on asserting his claim to what he thinks is his property. My cunt, my ass, my breasts and my mouth. He believes that he owns them. Danny has absolute control and won’t tolerate my wavering.

  Later at my desk I sip herbal tea and listen to Chopin. I’m trying to calm myself down instead of running for the hills again. Danny is obviously trying to communicate a non-verbal warning—if I fuck with our relationship, I’ll get fucked dirty even if I don’t want it. I could trawl the Internet for job postings; it’s not like anyone would really miss me here. My relationship with the big boss is a well-known fact; it makes for high tension and a lot of eye-rolling behind my back.

  But instead of running away, my mind is occupied by the present task in front of me. I’ve been crunching numbers all day, coming up with data that makes no sense. I run a brand new query to see if I can figure it out. I hate to have to turn everything over to my boss Akhil. This seems to happen every quarter when we balance out the final budget and spending. I’ve often thought that Montclair is way too lax on record keeping. It bothered me so much that I started to keep my own ledgers on the side. It was important to me to know where everything went and where it was coming from. Call it trauma from childhood poverty—even if the rest of accounting didn’t care, I would keep some record that monitored where every Montclair dollar came from, where it was going and where it sat at the moment. Over my dead body I’d be blamed for screwing Danny or Montclair’s financial life up. My boss Akhil would always work out the numbers when things didn’t make sense. In the end he’d take over completely when it was time to file business taxes. I like to think it’s the shoddy books here and not my accounting skills that are the root of the problem.

  Not like he could fire me without Danny’s permission, but Akhil Chaudhry always seems genuinely pleased with the work I do for him. He’s the one who officially hired me. I enter everything again until my eyesight starts to blur. I want to give up and throw my laptop on the floor. Instead, I pick up the phone and dial Akhil.

  He answers, “Uh-huh, uh-huh, I see,” to my explanation of the queries. He asks about our backup ledger program and I let him know I already ran it.

  “Aimee, send it to me in a firewall folder. I have to go over the balances for all of last week’s runs anyway. Can I send you what analytics sent over for the budget on planning?”

  “Of course. Sorry I couldn’t produce the balance. I tried—a whole bunch of times.”

  “It’s not you, it’s the program. It would be great if you could get the planning package to me by the end of the day.”

  “No problem, Akhil. Thanks for saving my ass. Again.”

  I send him the files and download all the data he’s sent me, but I make note of the first answer I came up with, even though I know that by the end of today they’ll come up with a different one.

  Danny blows into my office at quarter past five. He’s got a sports jacket on and has recently sprayed his cologne. A scent I used to crave is now one that just cloys up the air. Everything about Danny is starting to sicken me.

  “Ready?”

  His hands are in the pockets of his jeans.

  “Yeah,” I say, closing my laptop and grabbing my coat from the back of my chair.

  “You look delicious,” Danny says as he pulls me into an embrace. His tongue darts out to barely touch the skin just behind my ear.

  After the show and a huge meal of seafood, we head to a wine bar where Danny can smoke a cigar. He rubs my thigh under the table and every now and again strokes my arm.

  I want to tell him that I’m leaving. I want to tell him that I’ve met someone else. I could use Wade as my stand-in, I’m sure he’d agree. He seems to hate Danny already, and who could blame him? Our story isn’t pretty from any angle.

  “So glad you’re back, Sunshine. You have no idea,” Danny says as he nuzzles me gently.

  “Happy to be here,” I muster with my very best beauty contestant smile. I feel like a bad accountant and a glorified whore.

  He slides his hands over the fabric of my shift and one finger slips underneath and brushes against my panties. He tickles me ever so softly, with one finger running back and forth over the silk. I press my legs together, capturing his hand. Danny leans all the way into me and tackles my mouth, full tongue sweeping inside, even touching my teeth. Part of me despises him but another part of me would do anything to please him. He’s taught me all that I know and has rarely been unkind. I tell myself that this recent meanness will subside with time. I’ll absorb all of his anger and recycle it into desire. I’ll turn us around and we’ll be even better than we were before. Aimee and Danny, not Danny and his lover. Not Danny and the other woman.
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br />   “Aimee, I can’t do it without you. I can’t. I don’t want to.” He skims my neck with his lips and softly bites my earlobe.

  “Danny?”

  “Anything, baby. I’m sorry I failed you.”

  “Just not so rough. Talk to me. Don’t take it out on me—physically.”

  He grips my breast and his fingers brush against my nipple, which reacts immediately. My body isn’t shy around Danny. It knows him. He ducks his head and kisses me heatedly. He’s the only fifty-year-old man who wants to constantly tongue-fuck. I feel self-conscious. I want to downplay his affection. This is all new since I found out he was married. I’m suddenly self-conscious of how much he touches me. Before, I’d let him get nasty. I’d get too drunk and let him finger me under the table, bite my nipple through my shirt. There wasn’t much I wasn’t willing to do, especially at the club.

  “You don’t want to be my slut anymore?” he whispers huskily in my ear. “Baby, don’t torture me. You know what you do to me.”

  “I’d just rather have you say it than fuck it out of me.”

  Danny yanks my hair and pulls it down hard. He bites my lip as he kisses me and it makes my eyes water.

  “I’ll do what I want.”

  “I’ll leave again,” I say and move away from him in the private booth that we’re hidden in. I cross my arms, then grab my purse to leave.

  Danny grabs my arm and slams me down on his lap. “Baby, I’m sorry. I get scared and I act crazy.”

  He rubs his hands up and down the length of my arms, kissing my neck, and right away I can feel him getting hard.

  We leave the wine bar in haste and jump into a cab. I keep thinking I’ll give him one more night and then I’ll run. I’ll take off again and start a new life. I could go back down south. Get a job near my mom and try to meet a nice guy. I could live in Oklahoma or go to Texas. I don’t need decadence. I don’t need the spoiling. And I sure as hell could do without the borderline abuse I’ve been handed since I returned. Danny croons in my ear, “I’m sorry,” the entire way home.