0 comments/ 6627 views/ 0 favorites Rush Ch. 02 By: avasogently Inez curled her unkissed lips and hurled the box into the street, where it and the bracelet met their fate beneath the front wheel of a medallion taxi. She snarled in Antoine's direction but could only drop her head in defeat to his ex-wife's indelible presence. He had not attempted to retrieve the gift, only followed the arc of its route from her hand to the pothole-scarred street. When he turned toward her to lift her chin and apologize again, she slapped him. Her hand, which left a red imprint on his face, stung while his ironic infidelity seared her flesh and emblazoned upon her mind. If he was initially stunned, she was doubly humiliated. Little did Inez realize that when she hit him, he became fully aware of his existence and, like a newborn, breathed air for the first time. In one act of creation, he was made into her man, sort of like the Book of Genesis re-envisioned on a Manhattan sidewalk. She was his master; he obeyed. Antoine enjoyed a brief fantasy of Inez reluctantly accepting a ticket for the transgression. In fact, he believed that speeding in the fast lane of a friendship, a bond that only a year earlier he had banished to exile in the land of platonic love, was punishable by 40 lashes. Inez's face was still flushed from her brief act of violence, no matter how justified, and she apologized to Antoine. "Shall we eat now?" he asked as if nothing had transpired. "Sure, c'mon," she said. She had never felt this turned-on before -- not even during foreplay. But, this could be foreplay, she mused. "Now that's the girl I used to know," he said, sliding his arm around her thick waist. Mmm, I think this is foreplay, Inez heard the goddess inside of her purr. She felt her claws retract and a confident smile return to her face. When she glanced up at Antoine, she remarked internally how he was framed by the midday sun. She couldn't see his black rhinestone pupils but sensed the heat rising in her face. An orange glow from his radiant gaze. Like a divine entity, he leaned down and kissed eternal life into her, and just as a car drove past blasting Liz Phair's "Extraordinary" from its sound system. To be continued ... Standing directly behind Inez, Antoine inhaled the coconut essence from his lover's auburn-frosted braids. She pretended to peruse the Intermission Diner's distressed, laminated menu with interest, its edges taped to a large, weathered window facing West 43rd Street. What she craved lay beneath his nose, the soft double swelling that for the moment trembled dangerously close to her slender neck. Instinctively, the fine hairs at the top of her back and along her arms perked up in a prehistoric response to approaching danger. She tried to focus on the diner's offerings, knowing full well that she wished his generous meat was on the menu. Invisible swirls of his impassioned breath inadvertently misted the finer hairs on the nape of her neck in the narrow path where her braids separated and dangled past the collar on her olive-green swing coat. Despite the midtown heat, she felt a familiar chill from within. "I don't mind being your cheap date this afternoon, Antoine, but," she paused without turning to face him, "I want a fancy table, candlelight, roses, and a menu that includes a whole lobster and not just lobster bisque. You dig?" "Where is this coming from, Inez?" he asked. "You've always told me you prefer comfort food," he said, staring at her generous rear end, which not even the roomiest swing coat could hide. He imagined her on any weeknight, shoveling in bowls of macaroni and cheese while feigning interest in the fate of the protagonist in whatever woman-in-peril movie was airing on her favorite cable television channel. Her shrill tone snapped him out of the daydream -- or nightmare as it were. "Your ambivalent ways with me for the past 10 months have made me anything but comfortable," she said. Inez stepped to her left, out of Antoine's erotic force field, and turned sharply toward him so that her braids whipped the front of his opened jacket. He barely had time to look away. "You should watch those tendrils of yours, hon'," he said, his usually sparkling black eyes narrowing to slits. "I can feel the sting right through my jacket." "Well," she returned with a defiant flip of her braids, "at least I didn't complain when you bumped my grill. Couldn't you see that I was parked?" Sensing he had just been lashed, he nevertheless did not want to admit to the emasculation. "You need to accept that we have an indefatigable sexual attraction to one another. So let me just, uh, roll up to your bumper, baby." "Excusez-moi, but I'm not Grace Jones, and so you're not going to 'drive it in between' -- I believe the words go like that," she said. "Don't avoid my statement. We're sexual soulmates," he said. "Okay, okay, I admit that the thought of you turns me on. But enough of that. Look, how about we get together on a weekend for a change? I can't repeat this kind of long lunch hour, or else I could lose my job at the law firm. Then I'll really be up shit's creek," she said. "So what do you propose?" he asked, and as soon as he did, he regretted it. "Next Saturday's the second of October, so I'm thinking an Italian restaurant -- maybe one of the quaint ones in Little Italy. C'mon, babe. Whaddaya say?" He was dumbstruck. He felt as if he was spinning around like a rotisserie chicken. Like a terrified Jimmy Stewart peering over the stairwell in Vertigo. The first of October would be his ex-wife's birthday, but he could not divulge that to Inez. As far as he could discern from his stolen moments with Katrina, she had no one with whom to share her celebrations. Besides, he already had promised to treat her to dinner at Sardi's. He tried to imagine how his best friend, Yannick, would advise him in this awkward moment. He turned somatically febrile, stripping off his acid-washed denim jacket, which matched the jeans that flattered the contours of his lower trunk. "Grrrrrr," she growled in the manner of a young, foxy Eartha Kitt. She easily lost focus upon glimpsing Antoine's fetching body, which conjured up memories of how he had pinned her against the railing of the yacht as it sailed up the Hudson two years ago. "I don't know how you stay in such great shape, Antoine. Beating off after our naughty phone sessions couldn't possibly be that much of a workout," she said, on the verge of drooling. "Uh, have you ever heard of a gym, hon'?" he quipped. Before he could follow up his question with a chuckle, Inez jabbed her elbow into his ribs. Passersby were astonished, clutching their sides and sighing as if sympathetically suffering from his injury. Beads of perspiration doubled in volume as if conspiring against him. Still smarting from the pain, he nevertheless was far more worried as to how he was going to break the news about Katrina to Inez. He stumbled, unable to find his center, as if in a psychosomatic tug-of-war between restraint and desire. "Oh, dear God, Antoine! I'm so sorry, babe," she said, kissing from his ear to his mouth, then to his other ear. The thought that invaded his existence was: This is the kind of woman that would cut my throat as easily as she kisses me from ear to ear, and I bet she'd apologize profusely while choking me in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Tiptoed, she clutched his face and licked along the shadow of his mustache. His lips swelled from the hot, wet sensation. Using her meaty tongue like a penis, she penetrated his parted lips. She sucked in his hot breath and felt a faint contraction in her tilted womb. Then she turned so he could embrace her from behind. Like the vixen he begged her to act out during their phone sex, she poked her plump posterior against his junction. Antoine felt his boxers tighten on his genitalia. His dark pupils dilated. He bit his lower lip and risked spraining his neck to whisper amorous words into his lover's ear. Inez sank back into his trembling embrace and tried to hide her delight from his gentle prodding against her derrière. They were both grateful for the diner's dirty windows, which they hoped shielded their erotic deeds from the patrons inside. She leaned forward, pressing her palms to the warm glass. He stood stockstill, his present intertwined with their past like the interlocking strands in her ropelike braids. He was experiencing a delusional fantasy that carried him to the edge of ecstasy. Shutting his eyes, he imagined them having an afternoon tumble on the firm futon she had described in many of their erotic phone sessions. He could taste her briny perspiration and see her muscular shoulder blades sliding upon his firm caresses of her pillowy breasts and continuing around to her back. As if on cue, a 60-ish saxophonist with the complexion of dark Jamaican rum scraped his crate against the curb to grab their attention. As if the harsh sound of hard plastic on concrete failed to cut through their discord, the musician angled his ax in their direction and blew a swirl of harmony their way in the form of Coltrane's "Giant Steps." His arthritic fingers still worked their magic, their stubbiness a blur on the dull brass valves of his instrument. He seemed to summon all the air in his lungs to breathe new meaning into the song, its freshness in stark counterpoint with his unkempt silver beard, tarnished gold stud molded into his right earlobe and tattered beige camouflage jacket with baggy, soot-stained khakis. Inez changed her tune. "I want you by my side, Antoine. The way I've desired you to be since reuniting with you last November." "I was just waiting for the invitation, Inez," he said, his hands buried in his pockets. "Mother, may I?" Inez howled with laughter at the reference to one of her favorite childhood games. "Yes, you may take one giant step," she said in a mock-haughty tone. "Ah, that's more like it, hon'," he said and craned his neck for a peck on hers while planting his sizable palms around her shoulders. Despite her plus-size physique, she was nimble and easily slid out of his embrace. "Antoine, be a darling, why don't you. Take my hand and pretend you're a doting lover consumed with the idea of bedding me upon the first orange rays of sunset." He was still scowling at her comment when she fondled his firm buttocks. She could not believe he yelped, though his effeminate sound was drowned out by the saxman's frenzied crescendo. The Intermission Diner's sign, its name set in a sans-serif Broadway font, hovered above their heads. It was a fact that did not escape Inez, who had been superstitious since childhood. She hated when her friends would tell her to "break a leg" just prior to going onstage for any of her progressive junior high school's plays. At present she was channeling Lady Macbeth, and in character she cast a chilling glance at Antoine, who looked back at her meekly. She rubbed her forearm as if missing the "friendship" bracelet she had hurled into the street less than a half-hour earlier. The veteran saxophonist cleared his throat and rattled his coffee cup of coins in the pair's direction. Defeated, he slammed the cup against the concrete beside him and expectorated several times into the street, nearly slipping off his crate. He licked his lips the way he must have before a session at the Savoy, Cotton Club, or any number of elegant clubs where, back in the day, he and many other Black musicians were forced to enter by the back door. He fixed his chapped lips around his reed instrument and serenaded Inez and Antoine with "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes." Whether affected by the old man's mojo or simply the gentle swagger of his sax, the pair moved inches closer to each other. They both squinted through the soot-tinted glass to spot a vacant table. Another 10 minutes and they would get lucky. If the window were any larger, it would have resembled a high, wide display glass in the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side. The animals inside this diner's window, however, were stuffed in a different manner. They were wolfing down all sorts of oozing pink-and-green sandwiches and bloody burgers paired with French fries that undoubtedly were as artery-clogging as a serving of Québéçois poutine. Like the museum's carcasses, Intermission Diner's patrons were of varied stripes and sizes, and Inez was stupefied that she could discern most of them. She was certain that the phenomenon was not due to her visual acuity, though, as she had left her eyeglasses on her desk in a deliberate act of vanity to which all women past a certain age were entitled. Instead, she attributed her unusual ability of making out the diners, despite the grimy glass, to a gestalt that traced back to a childhood obsession for games of connect-the-dots. The problem was she had trouble discerning where to draw the lines in her current, labyrinthine involvement. Antoine, on the other hand, was a sun-kissed Narcissus so enamored by his reflection that he appeared unfazed by the opaque streaks formed by a curious mixture of water and airborne grime. At first he leaned back with the dexterity of a limbo dancer in a feeble attempt to capture his likeness in the few slivers of light that the window would allow of the sun. Then he leaned his torso forward as if assuming the female position in the abrazo of Argentine tango. Only by absorbing himself into his physical beauty could he temporarily forget his promise to his ex-wife. She was a gorgeous, sensitive woman who embodied a song she had often played on Sunday evenings: Ginette Reno's "Une Femme Sentimentale." Inez stood by Antoine's side, a hand on her cloaked hip, sizing up his 5-foot-11 frame. Lord, what a god, she intoned. She vacillated between fascination and annoyance until she no longer could bear either. "Fucking Antoine-in-the-looking-glass! Let's go in or dine somewhere else. I won't have much time to eat anyway; I've got to get back to work. I'm not a hotshot like you, able to make your advertising bosses swoon at the sight of you and forget that you're taking advantage of their lunch hour policy." "Relax, hon'," was all he could say as he checked out his profile. He removed a small comb from his back pocket and touched up his springy 'fro. She was frustrated less by his vanity than by their phone sex ritual, which always culminated with him groaning loudly into the receiver and with her frowning from not having a chance to get beyond a lubed state. Her soles were wearing thin from the relationship dance with Antoine. Now, standing on West 43rd Street, procrastinating about their lunch destination, she glanced up to curse the sky. She refused to believe that God could have been responsible for impregnating the latest affliction. As she cast her eyes slowly downward, hands on hips, she fixed her gaze on the Intermission Diner's sign. Flashing in gaudy bile-green neon lights -- despite it being daytime -- save nine of the 125 bulbs, the sign dangled outside the establishment's second-story windows. A peck on the cheek from Antoine brought her back to earth. They walked through the fingerprint-mottled glass door and waited for the hostess to seat them. Within five minutes a shapely waitress, Janine, shimmied over to their formica table. "What can I get for youz?" she said between cracking her gum, which made Inez's eyes twitch. Antoine gesticulated toward Inez. "I ain't got all day, ma'am. My shift's ending soon," said Janine. "All righty, then," said Inez. "I'll have two eggs, scrambled medium, with bacon, home fries and toast -- no butter." Antoine pretended to snore, which elicited a swift kick in the shin from his lover. "Ow! Dammit! OK, I'll have one egg over easy and an English muffin," he said. "Anything to drink for the botha youz?" Janine asked, smirking. "Make it two freshly squeezed OJs, hon'," he said, winking at the waitress. "What the fuck was that?" Inez asked as Janine swiveled her hips in the direction of the grill. "I've been coming here for years, Inez," he said in an annoyed tone. "Listen, don't start." "Forgive me, babe," she said softly, then kicked off her patent leather flats. "C'mon, that tickles," he told her as her stockinged left foot circled his right ankle through his sweat socks. When her foot fumbled at his crotch, he stopped complaining and his rock-hard bulge complied with her seduction. "Down boy," he demanded. They both laughed raucously. "Why'd you break the mood?" she complained. "Are you opposed to sex before breakfast?" "What, are we supposed to screw on top of the table before our eggs are served? I don't want to get slivers of glass from salt and pepper shakers embedded in my dick, sweetie," he said with a grimace. "Hey, what we were just doing--" "What you, you were just doing," he corrected her. "Whatever -- that was foreplay. We could always go and have a quickie in a bathroom stall," she said. "Speaking of which, where are the commodes in this joint?" "Downstairs," he said, pointing toward the rear of the diner at the large, dingy "Restrooms" sign. "Ooh, that's quite discreet, don'tcha think, babe?" she teased. Batting her eyes at him, she snaked her right foot up his denim-clad right leg until she reached his expanded crotch. "I see we've been watching 'Unfaithful' again," he said, referring to one of her favorite scenes from the once-controversial film. During more than one of their late-night phone conversations, she told him she often had fantasized about acting out the film's torrid scene in a restaurant's bathroom stall. She even insisted that Antoine not only rent the DVD of the film but also study French in his spare time. A few Berlitz lessons and nearly a thousand dollars later, he managed to perfect a French accent so that he could impersonate Olivier Martínez, for which Inez rewarded him with orgasmic phrases in English. Considering his lover's mean left hook, Antoine feared her other fantasy -- that of acting out the pseudo-S&M scene in which Martínez's Paul Martel commands Diane Lane's Constance Sumner to slap him senseless. "You know, I haven't had the balls to admit this until now," he said, grinning, "but that movie's a lousy remake of the great French film 'La Femme infidèle.'" "That may be, mon chéri, but let's just pray I don't wind up getting a blow to the head with a snow globe," she quipped. It took him a moment, and then he grasped her point. "Look, Inez, I told you that me and my ex--" "You can say her name out loud. 'Katrina,' for God sake!" she cried, attracting unwanted attention from surrounding tables. Barely lowering her voice, she continued, "You're still in love with her, aren't you? I can't get over that engraved bracelet." "You already tossed the bracelet, which, I might add, was unnecessary. Let's get off that topic and the one of Kat...my ex-wife, that is," he insisted. "Fine, just fine. Uh, here comes our juice," she said in a not-so-smooth segue. Janine had eavesdropped on enough of their conversation to know that a storm was brewing. She smiled at Antoine as she placed the glasses of orange juice down on the table. "Sure I can't get youz no coffee?" "We'd like some privacy. Just bring our food, please," Inez snapped. "Two coffees, one black, one with half-and-half. Thanks, hon'," Antoine added with two winks. Janine shot a glare at Inez, cracked her gum for emphasis, scribbled "Bitch at Table #7" onto her pad and swayed her hips toward a party of three across the room. "Just keep winking at our waitress like that, and I'll put that eye out," warned Inez. "Accept that you're a paranoid woman, but don't take it out on Janine. She's been busting her ass at this diner going on 20 years. She couldn't care less about our love affair." Then, trying to change the subject, he said, "Why don't you go back to showing me how you appreciate seeing me again, ma chérie?" Rush Ch. 02 "Oh, you love me, huh?" And with that, Inez's snarl melted into a smile. She shifted in the booth seat upon feeling her boy shorts dampening. When he noticed his lover's face flush, Antoine smiled back. He sipped on his orange juice and suggestively licked the tangy pulp from his lips. When he felt the ball of her heel push gently against the stiffness in his jeans, he nodded his head in affirmation of their lust. "Hot eggs comin'!" Janine announced suddenly, which made them both chortle. To be continued ... Rush Ch. 03 Inez braced herself for the onslaught of a hot platter of soft-scrambled eggs, bacon, home fries and toast as waitress Janine seemed to be perfecting her flying disc toss to an imaginary canine seated at the table. Blessed with quick reflexes, Inez unfolded her white napkin and used it to shield her face and prevent first-degree burns from the greasy strips of bacon and home fries performing sizzling somersaults before her eyes. "Damn, now that's a sure sign I should've worn my eyeglasses!" she exclaimed. "Yowsa, yowsa, yowsa!" Antoine yelled, then groaned. Inez mistook her guy friend's noises for guffawing at the acrobatic breakfast feat and replied in sing-song, "I wanna boogie with you." Laughing so hard she nearly choked on her leatherized gum, Janine turned her back to Inez and switched her way toward the kitchen. As she weaved through the hopscotch of tables in her path, she gave Inez the finger, letting it waggle on the downbeat of the güira heard in the eardrum-splitting merengue that was cranking from the diner's speakers. Unaware that she was keeping her own rhythm with the butter knife against the formica table, Inez followed the waitress's percussive digit to a path beneath her dingy apron. She could not believe her eyes when the saucy server began scratching somewhere down in the valley of the Cordillera Central, between La Pelona and Pico Duarte. Instinctively, Inez shot a glance at her moist scrambled eggs. Are those white particles amid the fried yellow yolks really the egg whites, or a rooster's sperm or -- heaven forbid -- are they bilious projectile from that hen? she wondered. Antoine, why didn't you chide that heffa?" she clucked. She might have repeated her query, but realized that her companion's eyes were shut and his mouth twisted into a whorl of flesh. "Antoine? Oh my God! What's wrong with you?" Patrons at surrounding tables paused only long enough to belch and to curse under their breath at the loud disturbances coming from Table #7. The din of suits and sluts resumed with the merengue segueing into Barry Manilow's ode to showgirl Lola and her lover, Tony: "Copacabana." "Awww, awww," Antoine was still groaning. Before actual words could travel from his brain to his lips, Janine trotted back to the fated table to the beat of Manilow's disco cowbells. Slinking her sixtyish figure down toward Antoine, she lowered her eyes to groin and sang, "At the Copa ... we fell in love." "Awww, awww, no. Nooo," he said, moaning and diverting his eyes from hers. To his chagrin, one of Janice's stretchmarked pink breasts gingerly boxed his generous tanned nose. Then she swung a plate of hot eggs over easy and an English muffin from behind her back. "Fuuuck!" he yelled. Looking in Inez's direction, he added, "My huevos will never be the same after your swift goal kick to my monkey, sweetie. Fuck me!" "I'd love to," joked the waitress, her grin disappearing when she noticed the silence. Inez played back the tape of Janice's first serve. She realized she had been giving Antoine a footjob under the table. "Have you no compassion, dear?" Antoine dared to inquire. While he gently squeezed his companion's wrist as if to find a pulse, Inez eyed her target and relied on her rapid reflexes. Her fork's trajectory barely missed Janine's rear end as she moved away from the booth. "I guess that's my answer, huh, baby?" Antoine asked, all the while cupping the deflated denim over his pruned scrotum. His was the raspy voice of a male casualty in a game of footsie gone awry. "I suppose you'll beg me to use my hands to stroke your ego next time, hon'," was all the endearment that Inez could muster before shoveling down her cold scrambled eggs. "Eat your eggs before they grow their shells back." Just for good measure, Antoine mouthed the words "I love you" in her direction, but received nothing in return except a few home fries beside his lukewarm, floppy eggs. Where is the woman who used to coo when I undid her bra with my telekinetic vision? he mused. "Mmmm, I love the Intermission Diner's scrambled eggs, Antoine. They must use a special ingredient, you think?" she said. "Yeah, nothing like hacking up a good one from the throat," he said, regretting the remark before the last word was enunciated. "Care to repeat that, mister?" she threatened. When she addressed him impersonally, he knew any chance of nookie was several months farther away from the long shot. "Look, sweetie, I'm damn near infertile from your, er, involuntary capoeira move in the cojones. I knew I shouldn't have encouraged you to take that Intro to Kick Ass course. "It was an African Brazilian dance class, and don't be such a smart ass, Antoine. I didn't object to your repeating the Salsa y Sueños class with ex-wife Katrina at the 92nd Street Y when, as you insisted, she was trying to deal with her immense solitude. Salsa y Sueños, all right. Hmpf. That woman remains la mujer des tus sueños, I bet." "Oh, boo, don't be so hard on me, especially when it'll take rehabilitative therapy for me to get hard in your presence again. Besides, my intimacies with Katrina soon will be a memories." If Pinocchio were not a fairytale, he would have his only possible hard-on, one long enough to whiff more of the coconut essence from behind her ears, which now were blushing like her face. "Am I really your ... boo?" she asked, her voice softening upon uttering each syllable. Knocking over what remained in his glass of orange juice and sending his utensils clanging on the tiled floor, Antoine reached over the table and embraced Inez's tensed shoulders until they surrendered to his warmth. She tasted his eggs over easy; he, her bacon bits. In the next minute, they both were wearing an assortment of condiments, from ketchup and butter to strawberry jam. They both hated the deli variety, but this kind of tongue sandwich whetted their appetite. "Ah-he-he-hem," Janice said while cracking a new stick of gum. She was not amused by the pair's foreplay. She had a reason to feel selfish, having survived the first year of celibacy since the third of her husbands ran out on her with yet another friend. In a tough city such as New York, friends were hard to come by, but apparently not to come with. At least that what her first dear heart used to tell her when she would complain to him about needing a boob job to keep up with her friends' silicon masterpieces. "Hey, hey," she said to her smooching customers, "Mickey and Kim, it's nine-and-a-half weeks later and my shift has ended. Botha youz get a room." All that Inez could muster, once Antoine removed his octopus suckers for lips from her neck, was, "Geez, Janice. I would've expected more sophistication from you. For instance, that classc line delivered by the server in A Man and a Woman, where the couple are dining in the Normandy Hotel --" "Yeah, yeah, I know that movie," Janice interrupted her. "I remember when Un Homey et Une Farm was released with that happy-go-fucky 'dubba-dubba-da' theme by Francis Lee ." "I think you mean 'Lai,' Janice," Antoine corrected her. "Whatever, honey. Lay is what youz wanna do here at dis here booth table, but not on my watch," the waitress cautioned. "Are you a warden or a warlock, I mean, waitress?" Inez teased. "No hon', only men can be warlocks. Women are the witches," Antoine offered, grabbing the remainder of his smashed English muffin and stuffing a ten dollar bill inside Janice's exposed bra. "Adios, Janice." He accentuated his farewell by slowly spinning Inez away from the booth and into a hustle figure to the first strains of Yvonne Elliman's "If I Can't Have You." Wrapped in Antoine's arms, Inez had a 20-second fantasy of their own version of Saturday night fever that made her body tremble. He noticed and held her tighter as they headed out of the diner and into the urban humidity. Kissing me would make it better, she desired to confess to him. He pulled her into his body, into his stiffness, and held her there. Her knees buckled suddenly, but he provided all the support she needed. Dragging her backward, tango style, toward a concrete wall of a bank that was going out of business, he pondered how easy it might be to make a quick deposit. A no-brainer, he thought as he smothered Inez's profile in full-lipped kisses. Pedestrians either skated past them, their jaws fastened to their mobile phones, or pounded the pavement while their telltale white cords announced to onlookers that they had been invaded by body snatchers via iPods. Urban zombies rushed by the euphoric lovers, unaware of their undulating movements and primal aromas. In the sliver of shadow beneath the building's roof, Antoine's long fingers made a swamp of Inez's grassy vulva, and her writhing response sent them probing her canal down to his knuckles. Her moans matched his in intensity and wavelengths. Feeling her muscles contract and release around his dewy digits, he knew it would not be long before his throbbing erection, impaling her buttocks' crevice through her swing coat, would turn to titanium in a chemical reaction. "I want to do you here, baby, out in the open," he whispered with rattled breath into her ear reddened more with ketchup than the blush of embarrassment. "Y'know, it's illegal ... ahhh ... in New York C-C-C-City ... aaaahhh ... to carry a concealed weapon ... aaaAAAHHH! Oh, God!" By the time she turned holy, he had maneuvered her clothing and his trench so that he could slip inside her, but he spotted a police car coming into view. The pair straightened up quickly and gathered their composure. "Guess you'll need to wear that trench back to the trenches," she teased her lover. As they walked past the diner again, they held hands and smiled each other's way. He squeezed her hand firmly then brought her knuckles to his moist lips. She glanced into his black rhinestone eyes, which met her dilated dark brown pupils. Before they could reach the corner, they were separated from their fantasy world. The curbside saxman appealed to them with his clairvoyant sense of humor: his rendition of Evelyn "Champagne" King's "I Don't Know If It's Right." Inez began to panic, although the chapped-lipped musician had no way of knowing about her stolen moment with Antoine. Yet he was the judge of their transgression, and it stood to reason that Inez's co-workers at the law firm of Greed, Avarice & Corruption LLP would be the jury -- that is, if clucking and snorting were allowed in court. Inez had survived the firm into her fifth year by the motto of "better seen, not herd." While she was chewing on her cud, it was as if Antoine were reading her mind when he sighed and said, "Back to the cutthroat culture of the ad agency, cutie." Antoine watched Inez's figure disappear into the late-lunch crowd. Her absence created a safety zone where he could reconnect with his fidelity to his former wife, Katrina. He was like a chameleon in his erotic desire, having no guilt over using residual his lust shared with one woman to fulfill another woman's emotional void. He walked out of the saxophonist's line of sight and yanked out his mobile phone. Bluetooth inserted, he phoned Katrina on his way back to Mather & Long, rehearsing a script stored for priapic days like this, when he needed her manual relief by midnight. It would take only 12 hours to make good on his booty call, but he wished he had more than a week to figure a way to weasel out of the planned romantic dinner with Inez . He had never missed celebrating Katrina's birthday with her, and this would be the big "40." To be continued ... Rush Ch. 04 Less than four hours remained until his dinner date with his ex-wife, Katrina, at her favorite Manhattan restaurant: Sardi's. In less than five minutes his mistress would emerge from the ladies' restroom with freshly scrubbed hands, ready to pry open a three-pound lobster across from him at a ramshackle diner. As the wisecracking waitress Janine approached their table, adjusting her apron and popping open one button too close to her mountainous cleavage, adman Antoine wondered aloud, "How in hell did I wind up in this predicament, needing to take out a secured loan to wine and dine a girl who can only be a side dish and an ex who'll always be a snide bitch?" "Hi, hon'," Janine greeted, snapping a stick of gum and sending spearmint spittle into a glass of water likely sourced from the polluted East River. "Heya, Janine. Say, don'tchu work daytime shifts only?" asked Antoine. "Well, since my last boyfriend absconded with my fourteen-karat gold vibrator that a previous lover had got me from Sand Trapeze or somewhere in the South of France ... " her story trailed off in some tawdry universe while he reminisced the previous night with his lover, Inez. The night following the day of their last lunch date at Intermission Diner, he had placed a booty call to Inez by cellie, leaning forward against a stucco wall outside her fourth-floor apartment in an attempt to hide his hard-on from passing tenants. Pleading wasn't working, as she kept cursing him out for procrastinating on consummating their reunion. Finally he earned her sympathy when a would-be mugger limped his way from the creaky elevator, his hand half-buried in a pants pocket bulging with more length than Antoine's boner. Cryptically Antoine whispered, "Stranger danger" into the phone. It took a minute, since Inez couldn't understand why her lover would switch from begging for sex to complaining about dandruff. When he insisted that he was located out in her hallway, she had the gall to ask, "How do I know to trust you, since we're sexually estranged? If Mr. Mugger's gun is bigger than yours, how do I know you'll be able to hit it?" "Woman, this ain't the time for one-a-yo size queen moments and jokes. My man's 'bout to riddle me with bullets right outside your door." "Yeah, I guess I'd better let ya in rather than listen to you die within earshot." "Yo, enough, Inez." Once inside No. 4-L, he was only several admonishments from getting inside Inez. "Sacred pussy my ass," he cursed into her flushed ear while yanking a handful of braids away from it and, with his other hand, pulling her pelvis harder against him so she could feel all seven inches of raw heat. The space in her Bushwick studio apartment was so tiny that two people trying to walk past each other ended up fucking anyway. "That's right, baby. Fuck this! Fuck it, fuuuuuck ..." "Like that, boy," she taunted, veering to the right as she backed up, else risk flipping out her pad's only window. "At least let me strip off my nightgown and panties. You're gonna sprain your fingers with my panties coiled around them like that." "Shushhh ... Let me take care of everything, honey," he assured *Rip!* went Inez's wet white panties, which dropped to her ankles. "Oooh, baby!" he squealed at the sight of her Esmeralda Spaulding afro-inspired bush, which despite its thickness couldn't stop her copious juices from oozing down her thighs and onto Antoine's serpentine flicking tongue. After he slurped up a mouthful, he gave her head, sucking her clit harder every time she protested that neighbors walking down the hallway might hear their sexmaking. And when he paused to realignment his Maxwell-like jaws, still kneeling before her trembling, fuzzy brown legs, he spotted new cum landing on his Kenneth Cole shoes. Watching a tiny pool form on the hardwood floor around him made him a bit dizzy as blood was directed away from his brain to his penis. "Dayum, girl! You sure keep the cream coming for yo man!" Doffing her pink nightgown, and its mixed scents of their perspiration and musk, she ordered him to "finish what you started down there." "Nah, I'm full now, but I'm ready to fill you with cock once more." Unzipped, his trousers slid to his ankles. A swift Astairesque kick later, his slacks landed in a wire trashbasket. "What? Only once?" she teased, twisting erect ebony nipples beneath a sexy, crooked smile. "No more questions," he said upon resumption of deep thrusts into a pussy as tight as a Blacksummers' Night groove. He was spreading her thick thighs with a brawny leg; pinning her rear to sheetrock that threatened to shatter down to the powder. "Unh-hunh, like that. Yeah, girl. Break it off! Unhhhhh ... unhhhhh ... unhhhhh ... yeahhhhh ... Inezzzzz ... UNHHHHH!" "Unh, boy, shoot cho stuff ... aaahhhhh ..." ********************* "Uhhh, Earth to Antoine," chirped Inez. Embarrassed that she had intruded upon his randy recollection, he cleared his throat. "Baby, you're back so soon!" he exclaimed, rushing to pull out her chair. Intermission was filled to capacity, and his late arrival had made obtaining a booth impossible. Zilch on a restroom fuck, too. Seeing Inez's knitted brows now, he realized that he still had no chance starring as her Olivier Martínez in Unfaithful. "Ap-par-ent-ly, I haven't returned to our table quickly enough," she said, "since I walked in on Miss Janine chattering about her ex's intimate theft -- and her testimonial about the endurance of The Versailles Company's Sun Goddess Vibrator with its 'guaranteed "d'or-gasms."' Inez was too angry to chuckle, but not to send the saggy-bosomed server her walking papers. Antoine tried kissing an apology onto the back of her hand, but Inez whipped out a medium ballpoint blue pen and on his napkin drew a prominent buttcheek accompanied by an arrow, sans Cupid. Suddenly, the door to the establishment flew open as a group of pre-theater diners exited, but the chill between Antoine and Inez had no connection to lower temps of an early-October evening. Antoine spied his cellphone for the time. Being late for a date with his mistress was excusable, he thought, but not for Katrina's fortieth-birthday dinner six blocks away at Sardi's. In his mind he fumbled for the words to inform his girlfriend that she indeed would become his mistress once he and Katrina remarried. He hoped that Inez would understand that, with a baby son on the way, remarriage would be more practical than paying child support for more than twenty years and, worse, having to deal with some dude raise his son and possibly turn him against him. Of less concern was accepting the future boyfriend tongue-kissing the woman he loved like a priceless objet d'art and drilling his name into her pussy until his name is obliterated upon each uterine contraction. ***************** By the time their new waitress, Gertrude, had set their steaming-hot plates -- each heaped with a fire engine red, three-pound lobster -- beneath their bibs and drooling smiles, Antoine had managed to lighten his lady's mood. Serendipity intervened when he had spotted, at an adjacent table, a pair of gay men locking lips over a gigantic chocolate-frosted cupcake with the words, "Will, won't you marry my ass?" written in lavender icing. That's when Antoine recalled Inez's love for the entire Cole Porter oeuvre, and he commenced his substandard medley with "You Do Something to Me." "Away, don'tcha sound sweet. Now, please pass the butter sauce, baby," she said as eagerly as on their last intimate connection, when his desire to go anal had won out over her plea for sixty-nine. In the absence of KY and Vaseline, he had reached for Bertoluccian inspiration, grabbing a stick of butter from a saucer between their half-eaten croissants and rolling Inez over the way Brando's "Paul" ravaged Schneider's "Jeanne" on a polished hardwood floor in a seedy Paris edifice. Although Inez was never impressed by Method acting, she inflated Antoine's head when she expressed -- once her anus had recovered -- that "you deserve a Golden Globe." He recalled countering her quip with, "Don'tchu mean 'Golden Globes,' honey?" Glowing across the table from him, she seemed to be reminiscing too, until she remarked, "Mmmm, this is some dayum delish lobster! Check out all the sweet meat in this claw, right?" "Sweetie, I love to see you so happy. And with your mouth full." Then he tasted a forkful of linguine from his enticing lobster entrée. "So you got jokes, hunh," she replied, trying to laugh. Her face was beginning to turn as red as the lobster shell she was clutching. "No, no. Don't talk with your mouth full," he said, pushing out his chair with his muscular rear end and rushing to lend her assistance. He immediately felt guilty for joking about fellatio minutes earlier. Not only was Inez choking; her lips and neck were starting to swell. She had crushed what remained of the lobster claw as she struggled to breathe. Patrons' conversations staggered to silent pockets while the overhead music -- Alicia Keys' "Unthinkable" -- filled the grim void that remained. Antoine attempted the Heimlich maneuver on his girlfriend, but the hives had begun to possess her flesh. Like an alien invasion, perfectly circular welts spread all over her face, ears, neck and arms, and within minutes her flesh was turning blue. Asphyxiated, she slumped over a plate of tortured. shellfish, mangled linguine and vomit. Flinging his heavy body over her back, he inadvertently knocked his cellphone off the table, which should have sent it shattering like a meteor upon entering Earth's atmosphere. Instead, the device landed face-up, and not a second after Alicia's ballad faded away, Mrs. St. Jacques' first name -- Katrina -- lighted up cerulean to the ringtone of Erykah Badu swinging with the Robert Glasper Experiment on Mongo Santamaría's "Afro Blue."