 JANUARY, 2014 It was her twenty-third birthday. None of the other patrons in the diner would have known by the way she carried herself; Ill at ease and eyes nervously scanning for anyone who might notice her. She need not worry. She was invisible, and invisible by choice. Invisibility was a skill and she had mastered it. Her shoulder-length hair was unkempt. It had been blue last year and for some months it had been pink. Mostly pink, anyway. She�d broke down and tried to dye it back to something resembling its original shade of blonde the night before, but only the bottom three inches held the color long enough to make a difference. That hair turned platinum white. The end result was a messy calliope of nothingness. Eyes did not catch on her, not even on her flawless face. A woman was foremost her hair, and the girl�s chaotic hair nudged a casual glance aside before any quickstepping New York passerby could revel in the beauty it framed. "Nothin' to see here, Mac. Move it along. Move it along." She situated the ceramic mug of coffee to her side, flipped open her notebook, and clicked an ink-coated stinger from the tip of her pen. The girl stared at the blank page for a long time. She finally sipped at her coffee as a diversion. It was tepid. The words, any words, were too ominous. The first loop of ink across the paper would constitute a Judas Kiss, the ultimate betrayal of all she was. She set the pen down and scraped a fingernail of chipped, goth black polish nervously across her bottom teeth. She looked through the diner window across the January streetscape of Linden Avenue. The first kids from George Gershwin Junior High were beginning to filter past on the opposite side of the plowed street. Otherwise the traffic was tame for Queens; the lull between lunch rush and drivetime. Joanie slid into the opposite seat of the booth and the girl�s concentration broke. �Hey gurlfriend,� Joanie said. �How�d it go?� The girl shrugged. �Jesus. You didn�t go.� Joanie adjusted her hobo purse on the booth seat and spooled her hipster scarf off her neck and into its wide mouth. �I went,� said the girl. �Did you? Really? You wore that?� Joanie scowled. The girl flinched and folded in on herself. �What? My hoodie? Nobody said it was formal.� �It�s not formal,� Joanie said. �But you look like a hot mess. I�d make you wash that awful sweatshirt of yours but I don�t think it would survive another cycle through the laundry.� �Stop picking on me.� Joanie took a breath. �You�re right. Sorry, babe. Sooo�?� The girl�s long neck disappeared as her shoulders pressed upwards. �We didn�t talk a whole lot. Just basic shit. He took a lot of notes. That was the weird part, we didn�t talk much, but he never stopped taking notes.� �Shrinks do that, you�ll get used to it.� �I guess. He seemed okay, the Doc.� �He�s the best. And easy on the eyes, right? Did I lie?� The girl smirked, then shrugged. �Yeah he�s cute. Maybe that�s my problem. Maybe I should look for a female psychiatrist.� �Don�t be a hater. He�s great. You�re going to love him if you give him a chance.� �Thanks again,� said the girl. �Thanks for paying for it. Or getting your folks to pay for it, I mean.� �Not a prob�the fuck you do to your hair, Polly?� �I tried the stuff you left me. The wheat blonde L�Or�al.� �Just the ends? The fuck!� �No, it just�it didn�t�I don�t know why it didn�t take evenly.� �You look like shit twice stepped-in, girl.� �I know.� Polly looked down at the notebook. Joanie clenched her teeth and seethed herself back to calm. �Darlin�, you need to serve a better class of clientele, and that means you must evolve a bit above this Suicide Girl look of yours. It adds years to your face.� �I know.� �Just� You know... Class it up a little.� �Okay.� �For the love of fuck, Polly, stop being so meek. You�re pissing me off.� The girl turtled her head a slight bit taller. �Fuck you?� she asked hesitantly. Joanie laughed. �That�s better. What are you writing?� �Homework,� the girl said. �The doctor wants me to journal out the whole thing. Start at the beginning.� Joanie nodded at the blank open notebook in front of Polly. �Right. I see you are off to an auspicious start.� �I took an oath to my daddy,� Polly said. �Breaking it is a big deal.� �Fuck him!� Joanie spat. �He�s a fucking lowlife and you owe him noh-thing.� The girl shrugged. �Yeah. True. But an oath is an oath. I mean, he�s a shitburger, but if I took an oath, that�s on me, right?� Joanie shushed long enough to flip her coffee cup upward and order a toasted sesame bagel from the waitress. After the waitress walked away, Joanie tapped her perfectly painted red fingernails on the spiral bound notebook. Joanie�s nail polish color-of-choice was a shade called �I�m Not Really a Waitress.� Polly reveled in this irony because Joanie was � more or less � a waitress. Or a hostess. Or a hooker. Or some strange m�lange of all three at the uptown club where they both worked. �Write,� Joanie said. �Go ahead. Write while I can watch you break your bullshit oath. Some crap he made you say when you were a kid doesn�t mean shit. If this were a court of law, that oath would be invalidated. You were �under duress.� � �Yeah.� �So write. Write one sentence.� �I don�t even know what to write,� the girl said. �Are you breaking out in hives? Damn, girl. Just write something inane. �My name is Polly Dawson.� Like that. Start with that.� �I almost wrote those words,� Polly said. �But my name isn�t Polly Dawson.� Joanie stopped in mid slurp of her hot mug. �It isn�t? Which? The �Polly� or the �Dawson?�� �Both. Dawson I got from the guy who forged my New York driver�s license. Remember I told you about him? And Polly�� The girl looked out the window. Joanie cleared her throat dramatically. �You think you know someone. My roommate has more secrets than the CIA. Polly isn�t your birth name?� The girl shook her head no. �Well,� Joanie growled, �you want a drum roll or something?� The girl never stopped staring out the window. She watched a gaggle of young middle school girls in plaid skirts and Burberry coats dancing their way home along the far sidewalk. �It�s funny,� she said. �It�s funny that I almost forgot my real name. I can�t remember anyone ever saying the whole thing out loud except Daddy when he was mad and maybe six or seven teachers. Youknow. First day of class?� � |
SEPTEMBER 1996 � Mrs. Hawk had the face of a poorly-manicured altar candle. She was ancient and the tip of her long nose was sooty with some kind of skin disease. Rivulets of waxy skin connected her chin to her chest. At the top of her round head, her grey hair was pulled so tight that her hairline scalloped. She looked as bitter and humorless as her surname. �I say again, Prinadlezhavshiy Reynolds. Who is Prinadlezhavshiy Reynolds? Children?� Pryn shifted in the fixed confines of her one-piece, wooden First Grader�s desk. It felt intractable and foreign on her bum, especially as a contrast to the soft, colorful carpet of the Kindergarten rooms. �Uhm,� Pryn�s hand lifted a tentative inch off the desktop, �My last name is Reynolds. But my first name is Pryn.� Mrs. Hawk�s face pinched. She scribbled on her notebook. �Silliness. P-R-I-N-N, is that, correct?� Pryn did not understand what she was being asked. �P-R-Y-N. That�s how my daddy spells it.� Mrs. Hawk rolled her eyes. �Lovely,� Mrs. Hawk muttered. �Always a delight to have to teach idiot yokel parents the fundamentals of our language as I teach their illiterate spawn. Just lovely.�
� Pryn stepped off the bus and searched the coffee klatch of waiting mothers for her own. The first school bus arrival of the year was an event, and all the moms were there with smiles on. Oks Reynolds stepped forward and scooped Pryn into a back-breaking mom hug while balancing her four year old son on her hip. Pryn reflected all that happy energy back into her mother with dividends. Pryn buried her nose into her mother�s neck, under the modesty curtain of her shimmering long blonde hair. Pryn smiled. �Welcome home, Sweetie! How was your first day of big girl school?� Something wrinkled Pryn�s nose before she could answer. Her mother was wearing perfume. Pryn went stiff. �Daddy came home?� �No, Sweetie, but he caught an earlier flight from Alaska and we�re going to pick him up from the airport tonight. Isn�t that great?� Pryn nodded with a stiff neck. The lie you didn�t say was better than the lie that came out of your mouth. She loved her Daddy, but he had not been home for a long, long time. All Pryn could remember from the last time Daddy was home was a big fight he and her mom had had. Oks had cried a lot. Then Daddy left and Oks cried for a long time after. Pryn could hardly remember what Daddy looked like. But she remembered that Daddy was trouble. � |
012214: DAWSON,P. (exct) F: #1661 � Q: Ox? A: Oksana. That�s her real name. O-K-S-A-N-A. Q: Sorry, I misunderstood. A: No. You were supposed to think "Ox." Beast of burden. That�s how Daddy said it. That�s how Daddy meant it. Like she was an implement. My real name is --� Well that�s not important. But it translates into the Russian word for �owned.� Ox. Owned. It reinforced our station. We were Daddy�s property. Q: Right. Right. Your mother was Russian? A: Belarussian. Dad met her when he was working the oil fields there. She was fifteen. He was nineteen. Q: Let�s start with your mother. Describe her for me. A: Gosh. Where do I start? You know how every kid thinks her mother is the prettiest mom in the neighborhood? Q: Sure. A: And then you grow up and you realize that your mom was, at best, average? Isn�t that how it goes? Well as a little girl I thought my mother was amazingly beautiful. Blonde hair with this natural redburst underwash that framed her high cheeks and tiny nose. She was the youngest of the neighborhood moms, I realize that now, looking back. I didn�t at six. She gave birth to me the week after she turned seventeen. Our birthdays are four days apart. So now, now that I�m a little older and more self-aware, I realize my mom was actually way more stunning than any mother of two kids had a right to be. Those pouty, flushed Russian plump lips of hers. Big old deer eyes. Hang on, I�ve got a picture of her in my purse. Ah. Crap. I don't mean to embarrass you. You're a professional, right. All I've got are some Polaroids. Here. These were taken the night after my Sweet Sixteen. I guess that makes her, what? 34 in these photos?  Q: Holy cow! A: Yeah. Q: She�s lovely. A: [laughs] Don�t bullshit me, Doc. She�s a sexpot. Q: Your words, Pryn, but I won�t quibble the description. She looks young. And very sad. A: Your eyes just took on that hungry wolf look that guys get when they see a sexy woman. Q: Possibly. I�m human and your mother is a lovely woman. For the time-being let's move past the fact you have nude Polaroids of your mother in your purse. Did she keep her accent? A: I left the house really fast when I cleared out. I took those photos out of Daddy's drawer. They were the only pictures I could find that didn't have Daddy or Nick in them. Well, I've got one more, but it's in my storage locker. As far as her accent goes, a little. The Russian aspect of Mom came out more in her word choice than her accent. If she ever struggled with English, it was before I was born. She had a little musical trace of the old country left in her thick-tongued consonants. And she'd cuss in Russian when she was stressed out. She said that after she had been in the States for five years, Dad spoke Russian better than she did. She tried really hard to forget her upbringing. She never looked back or had any nostalgia for her homeland. Q: She had a hard upbringing? A: Apparently. She always said, �Daddy saved me! Daddy saved me! I owe your daddy everything because he saved my life.� Q: Saved her from what? A: I never got the whole story. When Mom was drunk once a couple of years ago, she said that when she was a girl Daddy tried to buy her from a really bad guy, but the bad guy said she wasn�t for sale. So dad �Did what he had to do.� Q: What do you think that means, �Did what he had to do?� A: [shrug] Dunno. Q: Something violent, you think? A: Of course. Certainly. I�m sure they didn't have a trivia contest for possession of my mother. Q: Would you characterize your father as a violent man? A: I�d characterize my dad as �The most Alpha motherfucker in Alphadom.� There were three kinds of people in dad�s life; the one�s he owned, the ones he was going to own, and the ones who didn�t matter enough to own. Q: You sidestepped my question. A: No. You framed violence the way everybody else does. Like it�s a character flaw. Like it�s a latent disease that bubbles up and takes over a personality like a cancer. Naw. Daddy used force as a means to an end. It was never the first blade out of his pocketknife, but it was certainly right there behind the corkscrew and the screwdriver tip. And, to beat the metaphor to death, when �that� blade finally did come out, it was long and it was sharp, and somebody was sure to regret fucking with him. What are you doing? Q: I�m looking back over some notes. Oil man? What kind of oil man was your father? Roughneck or geologist, or what? A: Not a surveyman. He started as a roughneck. Built pipelines. Drilled from sea platforms. Whatever assignment paid more at the time. He bounced back and forth between assignments a lot, but always for ..REDACTED.. Corporation. Alaska for six months. Siberia for six months. Argentina for six months. Back to Alaska. Dad worked his way up the chain of supervisor positions until he said he looked down at the shower tiles under his feet one day and he only saw shampoo bubbling a path to the drain. That�s how he knew he was really the kind of management who makes a difference to an oil man. Q: I don�t understand. A: It�s like a lot of the second and third tier managers on a pipeline are still digging, and still getting dirty and covered in crude, you know? Q: Ah. Okay. Got it. And your dad is originally from� A: Lexington. He and Mom either lived in Louisville or across the river in Indiana their entire adult lives. Well, except for the parts where Dad lived in New Orleans with his other wife and his other kids. Q: I�m confused. Did he remarry? I thought your parents were still married. Is this before he met your mother? A: No. Same time. Sometimes he�d come home from a long assignment and live with us. Sometimes he�d go to his other wife and his other family in New Orleans. As far as I know, he�s still married to two women. And one of his other daughters also ended up being kind of a third wife. Q: And your mother found out about this other woman? When? A: I�m pretty sure it was an open secret. She�s the one who explained it to me, eventually. I started putting it together somewhere around� I dunno. Eleven. Twelve. Q: How�d that make you feel. A: Relieved. Q: Explain, please. A: If he was with them, he wasn�t with us. If he was fucking his other wife and his other daughters in New Orleans, then he wasn�t in Louisville fucking Mom and me. Q: And your mother�? A: Oh, just the opposite. She definitely always wanted him with us. Things for her were always better when he was with us. It was like a contest between his two wives, and when he came back to Louisville, she was winning. That�s why she always put so much pressure on me and my brother to be super obedient when Daddy was home. "Why cannot you be a proper daughter, girl? Be a proper daughter for your father!" It�s why she was willing to look the other way when he started molesting me. Well, that is not exactly an accurate description. She didn�t �look the other way.� She was in the room, coaching me. �Point your toes! Move your ass! No, curve your back the other way!� Hell, she even talked about sex technique with me while he was gone so that I�d be a better sex slave when he was in town. It wasn�t just wife competing against wife for his time. It was the whole incestuous package. Mom thought making our home the perfect sex slave brothel for dad was better than him not being there at all. And of course, even though dad took care of us financially, there was always extra, fuck-around money falling from the ceiling when he was home with us. Q: Whoa, let me back you up for a minute. Specifically, what age did the molestation start? A: Specifically, it�s almost impossible to say. I don�t remember anything exceptionally weird before I was six and a half. My sex history with my dad played out in very specific chapters, you know? When he was gone, everything was very normal. My mother was the world�s most loving and perfect and doting single mom. And then there�s that time he was home and did this thing. And then that time and that thing. Chapters. Really distinct chapters. That�s the way I remember them. Q: Hour is up, Pryn. Next time I want you to think about what happened during the chapter where you were six and a half. � |
SEPTEMBER 1996 � Oks ran her fingertips through Nicolai�s hair for the ten thousandth time, squatting in front of him and fussing over some insistent imperfection only a mother could see. The gate attendant opened the door to the jetway and locked it back on its hinges with a loud thunk. �Now you two be excellent children for Daddy. Promise me.� Oks looked back and forth between the children while they were still on the same eye level. Pryn and Nick mumbled assurances. �I mean it. �Yes sir.� �No sir.� Pryn, you hug him hard. Like a proper daughter. Nick, you hold out your hand and give Daddy�s hand a firm shake. Look him in the eye.� Nick nodded, but clearly did not understand. Though the memory of this man, �Daddy,� was hazy in Pryn�s memory, Pryn was certain Nick could not possibly remember Daddy at all. He was barely two the last time Daddy had been to Louisville. Nick�s only reference to Daddy would have been the framed photograph on his mother�s nightstand. Brusque travelers with briefcases in their hands and overcoats folded over their forearms shot out of the jetway, practically on a dead run to somewhere urgent. Then a pause, followed by an elderly couple holding back a dozen impatient adults in a clot behind them. Pryn waited, holding her mother�s sweaty hand. Oks bounced on her high heels and scanned the extant firehose of humanity spraying toward them. Until it thinned out. And then was gone. �Ah shit,� Oks mumbled. �He stood us up. Again. Bastard!� But then there he was. Last passenger off the plane. Pryn was unprepared for how breathtakingly handsome he was. She didn�t even recognize him as her father, only a tall and flawless man. Before her father appeared in the jetway door, Pryn did not believe there was a more handsome man on the planet than the actor who played Batman, Val Kilmer. The man smiling at Pryn�s mother was taller than the other men. Wider in the shoulders and very narrow at the waist. He was dressed like a magazine model. He wore shimmering blue-grey slacks and a matching vest over his tailored white shirt. His short, dark hair was so thick it looked plastic. Oks dropped Pryn�s hand and ran at the man aggressively. At the last second she jumped at his chest and he caught her sides with his hands. Pryn marveled at their size differential.� Her mother was smaller than the garment bag her father dropped before he caught her. His mother squealed with delight and Daddy pressed her into the air. The attraction between the two was as strong as any magnet, but Chapman Reynolds� thick arms were powerful enough to keep the gravity between them at bay for a long beat while he eye-swept his wife from head to toe. Then he pulled her into a long kiss, her shoes kicking two feet above the industrial airport carpeting. Chapman Reynolds set his wife on the ground and picked up his garment bag. �Noble Prince!� he said, walking toward Nicolai. Nick extended his hand formally. This made Chapman laugh; a broad display of perfect teeth. Chapman leaned forward and gave Nick�s hand two hard pumps. �And you!� Chapman turned toward Pryn. Pryn froze. She looked at Oks. Oks gave a subtle �hurry up!� wiggle of her fingers to match her impatient expression. Pryn hesitantly stepped forward and wrapped her arms around her father�s waist. He smelled good, but there was something thick in his trousers that pushed back against her cheek. �Where�d you park?� Chapman asked Oks. �Economy lot, like you said.� �By the taxi overflow?� �Yes. Is that okay?� �That�s perfect! C�mon family! I can�t wait to get home.� It was a long walk to the low-ticket parking lot, especially for little Nick, who had to practically keep up a dead run to maintain pace with his father�s long strides. The long trek through the surface lots and waits to cross busy streets on a cold evening rubbed a raw spot on the tip of Pryn�s nose by the time they arrived at the Taurus. Chapman slid behind the wheel and turned over the engine while Oks buckled Pryn in the back and then latched Nick into his car seat. Oks even loaded his bags into the trunk. Chapman lifted the middle arm rest as Oks took her place in the passenger�s seat. Pryn found it very odd to see her mother as a passenger. Oks beamed, and that made Pryn very happy. Pryn�s daddy huffed some warmth into his cupped hands, but did not put the car in gear. �� �Ready?� Oks asked. �Not just yet, babe,� Chapman said. Pryn watched her father fidget against his seat directly in front of her. She heard the distinct rip of a zipper, followed by the jingle of a belt buckle. The smile fell off of Oks Reynolds� face as she stared downward into her husband�s lap. �Honey,� she said nervously, almost a question onto itself. Her big eyes flitted toward the children strapped into the back seat. Chappy Reynolds hooked his big right hand behind Oks� tiny neck. With his left hand he pointed through the windshield at half a dozen cabbies standing in the cold, gathered around the lead car, talking. �See those gentlemen there? The first one that walks across the street to see you do your thing, I�m going to send you back to his cab to suck his cock, and then you�re going to come back here and start all over again with me. We�ll do that over and over again until you suck me off or they radio-in a call to every smelly friend they have in the fleet and you drain the whole immigrant lot of �em. You got it, bitch? Get busy.�� Chapman yanked Oks� head downward. A second later Pryn heard the slurps and mewls of her mother�s wet mouth working against something. �Ah, there we go.� Chapman�s neck swiveled against the headrest. �Yeah. There we go. That�s nice. Can you taste that? Can you taste Her pussy? That was Her idea. She said it was her way of saying hello, and she said she knows it won�t take long for you to fuck up and send me back South again. MMmmmm. Oksy. You suck like you really missed me. Did you miss me?� Pryn heard her mother come up for air. �Yes sir.� Then more slurpy mouth sounds. �Uh oh,� Chapman said. �Your friends over there are looking at us. They know what you are doing. They�re looking over here and smiling like they know what you�re doing, slut. They can see that shiny hair of yours flashing in the streetlight.� Chapman waved to someone outside the car. Oks� mouth slurps echoed through the interior of the car at a more frantic pace. �They�re talking to each other. Daring one another into coming over here and watch you do your thing. I don�t know if you�re going to make it, slut. Maybe if I hadn�t fucked Katrina before I got on the plane you�d have a chance.� Oks� breathy voice: �You always have more for me, sir. I know how you like it. There�s always more in you, and I�m going to get it.� �That�s my slutty girl.� Chapman leaned his head backwards against the head rest and moaned a deep, lion-like rumble.� He took a few hard breaths and then reached up to adjust the rear-view mirror until he was looking at the reflection of Pryn. Pryn looked back at the oval crop of the top of her father�s face, awash in a moving pastiche of shadows, moonlight, and headlamp reflections. �How are you, darling? You�re not a baby any more, are you? You�re a proper girl. And a pretty one.� Oks had been firm about what to say if Daddy complimented Pryn. �Thank you, Daddy.� �How�s school?� �Fine.� �What�s your teacher�s name?� �Mrs. Hawk.� �You like her?� Pryn considered this. �No sir. Not really?� �Why not?� �She�s kind of mean.� �Ooohhhh. Shit, that is nice, slut. Better hurry up. Looks like one of them is about to walk over.� Back to the mirror: �So who is your best friend, darlin�? What�s her name?� �Troy Walker.� �Troy?� Your best friend is a boy? Really?� �Yes sir.� �Oh, I�m going to have to keep my eye on you, too, I guess.� Chapman smiled. �A boy for a girl�s best friend. I can�t believe that. Have you kissed him? Troy the Boy?� Pryn�s face contorted in disgust. �No sir. That�s gross.� �So what do you and this Troy fella do when you do your friend thing?� �Play video games.� �Uhhhhn. Jesus, you are sucking like the little split-tailed whore I remember. Fuck, you�re a horny little cocksucker, aren�t you?� Oks voice: �Yes sir. I�ve missed having a hard cock in my mouth for so long, I couldn�t hardly stand another minute without hot come.� To the mirror: �Are you good at video games?� Pryn shrugged. Then nodded yes. �Honey, when Daddy asks you a question, you answer Daddy proper, okay?� �Yes sir, Daddy. I�m pretty good at video�� �Whooops!� Chapman said, looking down at his lap. �One of those greaseballs is walking over here. Looks like you aren�t going to make it, slut. Maybe my daughter can hop up front and keep her daddy ready until you get back from being whored out to a stranger and finish me off.� Pryn craned her neck to see over the hinged-up center armrest. Indeed, there was a fat man with a moustache and a cabbie�s hat walking an irregular line toward their car as if he were uncertain. Or drunk. The car shook with the motion of Oks doing whatever her head was doing on Chapman Reynolds�s lap.� She moaned a wet and mournful siren, a thrumming sound start-and-stopped by something hitting the back of her throat every half second. Chapman Reynolds looked at his daughter in the mirror once more and smiled. �You know, when your momma was your age, she was already loving on her daddy like a grown up girl.� Down: �Isn�t that right, slut?� Chapman Reynolds smiled a huge, evil smile. Then the smile turned into a grimace as his lips peeled back from clenched teeth. �Gaaaaaaa-YAH! FUCK! DAMMIT!� he shouted. Nick, who had been kicking his legs against his car seat in boredom, flinched at the angry outburst from his father. He looked as if he might cry. Chapman rolled his neck one more time. Oks lifted her head back up, her tongue flicking back and forth at the goopy corners of her mouth to capture something important. Pryn�s daddy slapped the car into gear and nearly hit the moustached man as he pulled out onto the access road.
� The next morning, Pryn shuffled into the kitchen to find her father sitting at the table, pouring over the stack of spiral bound notebooks that her mother called �The Books.� Sometimes she called them �The Budget.� If Pryn or Nick wanted a toy, their mother would always make the same determined, mouth-sideways expression and say, �I�ll have to see if that is in The Books.� Or �I�ll have to email your daddy and see if we can put that in The Budget.� Pryn had once opened �The Books� and looked at the curious lists and numbers penned in rows by her mother�s elegant script. Pryn expected The Books to be a list of toys that Pryn could have one day if she just knew which ones to ask for. No such luck. Just long boring lists of can goods and tri-folded grocery store receipts stapled next to them. For his part, Chapman Reynolds seemed fascinated by the lists of boring foods and clothes and utility bills that Oks Reynolds had written and fastened in The Books.� He rubbed the stubble on his angular jaw and tapped at a calculator positioned beside his coffee. He wore only a T-shirt and pajama pants. The T-shirt looked too small to contain the big muscles underneath. Pryn looked at her father�s knotted, sinewy biceps on bare display. He looked like he could lift a car over his head and throw it, like a Batman villain. He didn�t look up at Pryn as she pulled a frozen waffle out of the freezer and dropped it into the toaster. The metallic shwunk! of the toaster spring summoned Oks from the family room. She was wearing a loose teal T-shirt with no bra underneath. It was long enough to cut the tops of her thighs. Pryn stared at the dots of her mother�s nipples poking from the tent of her breasts. Her mother never dressed this casually in the morning. Her mother never went without a bra. What if Troy came over to play? Pryn would absolutely die of shame if her mother�s nipples were poking out where her friends could see them. Oks kissed Pryn on the scalp. �Good morning, Pryn.� Pryn�s nose wrinkled. Her mother smelled of something musty. �Nick up?� Pryn asked. �He�s downstairs in the playroom with his cars.� Pryn sighed. �He�s lucky not to have to go to school.� �Not much longer and he�ll be on the bus with you,� Oks said. �Ox,� said Chapman. �These books are all pretty tight. Good job.� �Thank you, sir,� Oks smiled. �Yeah, except for two weeks ago you go six dollars off.� I can�t find it anywhere.� Oks blinked in disbelief and leaned back against the sink. �Really, sir?� Thirty one months of perfect accounting and you�re going to fuss over six dollars from two weeks ago?� Chapman leaned back in the kitchen chair. He was so large the chair squeaked under his weight. �Actually I can see that you skewed a full sixty dollars off-plan in the summer of 1994, but you clawed that back from the Christmas budget, didn�t you? Ox, the books are either right or they aren�t. It doesn�t matter if it�s thirty-one months or thirty-one years. It doesn�t matter if it�s six dollars or six hundred dollars. The books are either right or they are not right. What the fuck is with this?� For the first time Chapman took notice of Pryn. He was pointing at her pajama pants. Oks shifted weight between her tiny feet. �Sir? She�s just a little girl.� �Little girl, big girl, I don�t fucking care,� Chapman said. His brow furrowed and he looked so menacing that Pryn nearly peed herself. �Little. Big. Penny. Dollar. Month. Year. I said no pants on my women. How fucking hard is that to understand?� Oks opened her mouth and then thought better of what she was going to say. �Yes sir.� She forced a smile. �I�ll take care of it right now.� Oks grabbed Pryn�s hand and lead her upstairs to Pryn�s room. �Mom?� Pryn said. �Shut up,� Oks answered with a terse last yank of Pryn�s arm. �Just shut up. Where are your skirts?� �I don�t want to wear skirts to school, Mom.� �I said to shut up. You�ve got clean tights in your chest-of-drawers somewhere. Take off those pajamas, now. Oh shit, please tell me that you still fit in these skorts until I can get to Target.� Oks held a khaki skort in front of Pryn�s waist for size. �What is going on?� Pryn asked. �Daddy doesn�t want you in pants while he�s home. Skirts only. Don�t backtalk, just do it.� �I�m not going to wear skirts to bed,� said Pryn, kicking off the last of her pajama bottoms. She stood defiantly with her arms crossed over her bare chest. "You'll wear a nightshirt or a long T-shirt to bed instead of pajamas." Oks stopped and looked at Pryn. �Aw fuck. Lose the Wonder Woman panties, too. Your daddy would shit kittens if he saw those. Put on a pair of normal panties. Flowers or like that. Oh my God, he�s going to beat my ass. I don�t have any girl clothes for you. How could I be such a fucking dura?� Pryn noted that her mother�s Russian accent was thickening, the way it did when she got really nervous. �Don�t be silly,� Pryn said. �All of my clothes are girl clothes.� �Not as far as Daddy is concerned, they�re not. Oh shit. Oh shit. I�ve got to figure out what happened to that six dollars, Pryn. I was hoping he wouldn�t make a fuss, but he sure did. Six dollars. Gospodi!� �I have six dollars in my penguin bank. You can have it, Mom.� �You are a sweetheart. That is not going to solve my problem, Pryn. It�s not the amount. It�s my lack of attention to details. That�s the kind of thing that gets Daddy�s piss up.� �Why is he mad at you?� �Daddy has rules, Pryn. We talked about this before, remember? You promised me you were going to be a good girl and make him want to stay with us for a long time, remember?� �What were you doing with Daddy in the parking lot of the airport last night? He wasn�t mad at you then.� Oks stopped and snuffled a laugh. �Honey, if I could do that for Daddy every minute of every waking hour, I would. Unfortunately even your horny daddy can�t want my mommy-loving all the time. He needs time to rest. And when he rests, that�s when he gets picky about things like skirts and mistakes in The Budget.� �What were you doing with your head in his lap?� �I was loving on him, Darling. Your daddy had not seen me for a very long time, and men don�t like to wait to be loved on, so he wanted love and I gave it to him.� �I thought mommies loved daddies with their hoo-ha.� Oks never stopped opening and closing drawers. �Moms love dads with their whole being. Their whole body. Their whole soul. Just don�t worry about it, okay. I�ll worry about daddy. You get dressed.�
� The pneumatic bus door hissed open. There were half as many moms waiting for the offload of kids on the second day of school. Oks was not among them. Pryn hopped off the lowest step of the bus and onto the curb, her Elmo backpack colliding a beat behind. She was invisible to the other moms. They were focused on their own. Pryn half expected one of them to assume the role of Designated Mom and walk her home. None did. Pryn stalled for a few shuffles of her feet and then walked five feet behind Mrs. DeLio and Maurice. Pryn knew they had to walk past her house on the way down the cul-de-sac. Pryn pretended she was their charge. The skorts her mother had made her wear were cutting into her waistline. They were too small. Pryn couldn�t wait to shuck them and put on some jeans. Pryn expected Nick would be waiting for her push him on the swingset. As always, she would protest and pretend that sacrificing prime cartoon time was a burden, but in truth there was little that made her more happy than doting on her brother. Pryn walked through the wooden backyard fence gate, around to the kitchen entrance. She let herself in the unlocked door. �Moooom!� I�m home!� Pryn announced, dropping her backpack on the wooden deacon�s bench with a dramatic thud. Pryn reached into the refrigerator and grabbed a Capri Sun from the box on the bottom shelf. She closed the door to find a gothic horror facsimile of her mother where the door had been. Oks was pale. She had a puddle of black mascara wash pooling under her eyes like a raccoon. She was wearing a man�s sleeveless T-shirt, again without a bra, and again with obscene nipples pushing from her breasts. She wore a plaid short skirt and no shoes.� Pryn�s eyes locked on the thick black choker her mother wore around her neck. Then Pryn realized it was a dog collar. The ghost pretending to be Oks Reynolds said, �Welcome home, baby!� in the same sing-song mom voice that Pryn�s real mom used. The ghost mom hugged Pryn and kissed Pryn on the scalp the same way that Pryn�s real mom did. Then the ghost mom whispered in a chilling, urgent voice, �Go downstairs and stay with your brother until I call you for dinner. Be a very good girl like you promised me. Be very quiet and don�t come upstairs for any reason until I call for you. Go!�
� Nick was a squirmy boy. It was hard to corral him in one place or one activity for very long. He had the attention span of a gnat. Pryn loved Nick above everything, even more than she loved her mother, but Nick was a frustrating little brother. He never wanted to play on the same playground item for more than two minutes before running to a different station. He never wanted to crayon in a coloring book long enough to finish a picture. Pryn took great pride in her crayon skills, even cutting construction paper frames for her best, refrigerator-quality work. Nick taped his coloring book pages to the hall side of his bedroom door with nothing more than a hastily crosshatched scribble of Cadet Blue on the turtle�s hat. Pryn found Nick wedged in the narrow gap between the washer and dryer, quivering. The needle on her danger meter made the final twitch from the yellow zone into the red. Nick�s face said it all. His eye sockets were sallow from crying, and he was looking up at the subfloor like the Boogeyman himself might come crashing through it at any moment. �Hey, brat, it�s okay,� Pryn said. �I�m here.� She tried to smile. Nick nervously pointed upwards. A beat later came the screech of Oks in agony, a high-pitched animal yip that burst out of nothingness and then lingered unwelcome in Pryn�s inner-ear like a burrowing insect. Pryn�s skin crawled with fear. She pulled Nick from his hiding place and relocated him to the primitive cedar closet in the far side of the basement. She closed them both inside. It was farther away from the violence above, and all of the coats and dresses hanging above them helped muffle the traveling sound waves. Pryn wrapped her arms around Nick�s quivering torso, bringing them up under his arms into a full-nelson of her hands cupped over his ears. For once, Nick seemed content to stay where Pryn put him. For her part, Pryn wished her friend Troy were spooning behind her, keeping her safe and holding his hands over her ears so she didn�t have to hear another one of her mother�s icepicks screams.
� Suppertime would have been just another suppertime if not for two anomalies: Chapman Reynolds sat at the normally empty spot in the table, and Oksana Reynolds ate standing at the kitchen counter. Other than that� normal. Oks made her signature pickle-slaw salad and macaroni goulash with lamb meat: Pryn�s favorite dish and Nick�s favorite dish, respectively.� Chapman Reynolds had three helpings of both, complementing his wife�s culinary skills at least once every ten bites. �Ox, Darlin�,� he pushed back from the table and patted his flat stomach with a hand the size of a frying pan, �I�m going to have to run ten miles to burn through all these carbs, but goddamn you can cook a meal fit for a Czar.� Oks cleared his dishes and kissed Chapman on his ear. She was dressed like a mother once more. No dog collar. Just a short denim skirt and a gingham top tied into a crop that left her stomach exposed. �You could use some comfort food, Darling Husband. You�re all sinew and bone. I know how to keep some meat on my man.� Pryn thought it sounded odd for her mother to emphasize the word �I� so strongly. �Believe it or not, the company cookie in Siberia isn�t half bad, but they can�t seem to keep a decent cookie in Alaska. That camp is always turning over the skill jobs. Of course, they�ll hire any strung out cokehead who wanders close enough to the outstation to stay through the heavy snows.� Oks loaded Chapman�s plates into the dishwasher. �Anytime you need us to come along with you, I can feed you and your crew.� �You and sixty horny, drunk leadhands?� Chapman smiled and shot a wink at Pryn. �Yeah, I bet your mother would like that, don�t you?� Chapman maintained his eyelock with Pryn. Pryn tried to look away, but her eyes kept flitting back to her father�s gregarious smile. �What about you, Prinadlez?� Chapman asked. �Would you like to see Alaska?� Pryn continued to shrink under the withering gaze of her imposing father. She slouched lower in her chair. She shrugged. Any hint of smile fell away from Chapman. �Ah. So it�s going to be like that between you and me, huh Prinadlez?� Pryn sank in her chair until her eyes fell below the bevel of the table and she did not have to take the full brunt of her father�s disapproving eyes. �Prinadlez, sit up and answer me,� Chapman said. �Good. That takes care of the sitting up part. You know that shrugs and nods are rude substitutes for proper conversations. I�m not going to warn you again. Now, I asked you a question. Would you like to visit Alas�� �No!� Pryn shouted it so abruptly that Oks fumbled the glass she was loading into the dishwasher. Everyone stared at Pryn. Even Nick. Chapman took a deep breath. �Alright. I heard that. Tell me. Why don�t you want to go to Alaska, Prinadlez?� �I don�t know,� Pryn snapped. She was surprised by the sound of anger in her own voice. �I just don�t. I don�t want to go to Alaska and I don�t want to go to Russia. I don�t want to go anywhere. I like it here, and I liked it a lot better before you came here and messed everything up!� Oks raised her hand to her mouth in horror. �Prinadlez!� �Well it�s true!� �Little Miss!� Oks growled, �you march your pink ass right to your room and�� �No.� Chapman raised his hand and silenced his wife. �I asked my daughter a question and she answered me. Honestly, it would appear. Very honestly.� Chapman took a deep breath and stared Pryn down. �I�ll deal with Pryn after dinner. Personally.� The way her father said �Personally� took the verve out of Pryn. She realized she had made a tremendous mistake.
� Oks walked silently into Pryn�s room and looked down at her with somber eyes. Oks extended her arm and splayed her fingers. Pryn shuddered. She placed her Polly Pocket in her heart-shaped plastic home and took as long as possible to button it up. Pryn stood and took her mother�s outstretched hand. Her mother began walking Pryn downstairs to her doom. Pryn�s knees began wobbling involuntarily as they negotiated the stairs. She steadied herself with the banister. Oks marched Pryn to the door she had never been beyond: the door to her father�s office was locked when her Chapman Reynolds was away, and he was always away. Oks stopped and locked eyes with Pryn. Oks� tiny left paw draped over the knob. �How many times did I tell you to be a good girl while your father was home? Hundreds, maybe? And you did not listen, Prinadlez. Did you?� A salty waterfall crested the bottom of Pryn�s eyelids and her chin quivered in time with her knees. Her mother�s treacherous fingers gripped down on the doorknob and twisted. The door opened. Her father sat in a padded lounge chair the size of a throne on the far end of the room. He was waiting for Pryn and he was not happy. The look on her father�s face forced a flex into Pryn�s bladder. Her shoes refused to move forward, but her mother yanked her hand until they had to unglue from the hallway to prevent Pryn from faceplanting on the office carpet. �Prinadlezhavshiy Reynolds,� Chapman Reynolds bellowed in his deepest voice. �Get in here.� He pointed at the floor in front of him. �Kneel.� Pryn folded to her bare knees. Her skirt seemed to be too thin a defense against the giant man in front of her. A nice thick pair of corduroy slacks would have made for better armor against the spanking she would likely face. �Ox, get over here. Turn around.� Chapman Reynolds pulled up his wife�s short skirt to show his daughter the violence that marked the bare buttocks underneath. �You see this?� Chapman asked Pryn. �Do you see what I did to your mother for stealing six dollars from me?� Pryn�s brain could not process what she was seeing. There were horizontal blood welt stripes all over her mother�s bare butt. Her skin looked like a tiger pelt formed of long, angry purple scabs. Pryn attempted to tell her father that she was very sorry, but she could not seem to move air in or out of her lungs. �Your mother got a proper caning for her indiscretions,� Chapman growled. �And now I�ve got a sassy-mouthed daughter who doesn�t respect her father. What the hell do you think I�m going to do with you?� �S- s- s- haaahaa�� Pryn�s tried to force out another apology, but a whoosh of ineffectual air loitered between her teeth. �I�m going to have to teach my daughter an important lesson. Ox, I need you to leave and lock the door behind you as you go. No matter what you hear coming from this room after you leave, do not � under any circumstances � attempt to re-enter this room until I call for you.� Do you understand me, Ox?� �Yes sir.� Ox nodded and gave Pryn a sad, knowing nod. She turned and walked out of the room. Chapman tilted his own neck until it cracked and popped. He took a deep breath and allowed the tension to fester. �Alright,� he announced. �It�s time, girly. I�m going to teach you a lesson that you are never going to forget as long as you live.� � |
012914: DAWSON,P. (exct) F: #1661 � Q: You really don�t have to go into details, if you are not comfortable. You can speak in generalities. A: About what? Q: About the beating. Enough to say it happened. A: Oh he didn�t beat me. Q: He didn�t? A: Nope. He didn�t even spank me. He just made good on his promise to teach me a lesson I�ve never forgotten. Q: Uhm. Okay? A: He taught me how to make him a Sazerac. Q: A what? A: A Sazerac. The drink. The cocktail. A Sazerac. He said it was the cocktail of New Orleans and it was my job to make him a Sazerac any time he asked me to. Which turned out to be quite frequently. Q: A Sazerac. What the heck, if I may ask, is in a Sazerac? I�ve never heard of it. A: It�s an insanely complicated mixed drink. Or at least it seemed like it at the tender age of six. It�s mostly rye. Absinthe is legal in the States now, but back then it was stuff Daddy smuggled out of Russia. Perchaud�s Bitters. Muddled sugar cubes. Daddy wanted his sugar cubes muddled with a wedge of fresh orange slice. Then there�s a twisted lemon peel. Daddy was really picky about the lemon peel. No lemon goo on it. Just oils from the peel. Q: That was your punishment? Mixing a cocktail? Did he make you taste it? Get you inebriated? A: No. Later on I sampled, but I was nine or ten by that time. And it wasn�t because Daddy made me, it was because I really wanted to make him a great cocktail and I had to know how it tasted. But yeah, he had a little wet bar in his locked office and that was the night he taught me my first lesson in serving him. Q: And then? A: And then I sat on his lap and he talked to me like I was his daughter for the first time that I could remember. He wrapped me up in those big, bridge cable arms of his and he kissed my ear and he asked me about everything that could possibly be an ongoing concern in the life of a six year old girl. He drowned me in man-attention and wow! It was a delightful way to spend a few hours. It was like we formally met for the first time and I finally saw his good side. I saw what my mother saw in him. I saw how amazingly charming and attentive he could be. Q: This man who just lifted your mother�s dress to demonstrate to you his cruelty? A: You�re thinking about it like a rational adult. And for that matter, you�re a guy. I�m not sure you understand that part of being a woman that responds to laser-focused �man attention.� �I�m explaining to you where I was on that September evening in 1996: Sitting on his lap, with my back leaning against his starched shirt, smelling what was left of the day�s aftershave. I was awash in the full attention of a beautiful man, with his scratchy jaw stubble rubbing against my neck and the earthquake rumble of his deep voice moving through my breastbone and vibrating my organs into liquid goo. It was awesome. All I could think was, �Well, I guess Mom must have really screwed up. Because I�m on Daddy�s inside and she�s on his outside. Sucks to be her.� Q: You mentioned that the sexual abuse started on this particular �Chapter� with your father. A: Yes. Q: When did it happen? A: I just told you. Sazeracs. Q: I don�t understand. He touched you while he was teaching you to bartend? A: No. No touching. But that�s where he took ownership of me. It�s when I gave myself to him. It is the point in my life where things shifted and I prioritized Daddy over my mother, you know.� All the sex that came in the years after would not have gone so� What�s the word? Unimpeded, if not for that night where he folded me in his arms and swept me into his trust. Now that I think about it. My submissive roots weren�t entirely fixed before I left his office that night. There was the part where he came to my room later to tuck me in. � |
� �Good night, Pryn.� Oks kissed Pryn on the cheek and cleared the room for her husband. Chapman hovered over Pryn. She had Milton Bear tucked under her arm. She looked up at her father. Neither spoke for a full minute. �You favor your mother,� Chapman declared. �I wasn�t sure if you were going to be a blonde or a redhead. You�re kind of in that perfect middle tipping point, like your Mom.� �Strawberry blonde,� Pryn offered. Chapman wrinkled his nose. �Naw. Don�t say that. Strawberry blonde is something else. Something less than what you are. You will be beautiful. Like your mother. I just thought that you�d tip one way or the other based on my genes. Sometimes children are blonde at birth and then they turn brunette. You kept that balance of red and blonde your mother has. I hoped you�d go red. A nice redheaded daughter would complete my harem of girls quite nicely.� Pryn blinked. She did not understand. �But it doesn�t matter,� Chapman said. �Because you are going to be a spectacular beauty, regardless of the color of your hair. I can tell that much.� �I love you, Daddy.� Pryn let the words echo. If she had said as much before, she could not remember ever vocalizing it. �I know, Prinadlezhavshiy. But I still expect you to show me with the things you do for Daddy and not the words you speak.� Pryn nodded. Somehow, this made sense. Chapman hovered some more. Pryn expected him to kiss her good night, but instead he turned for the door. �Daddy!� �What?� �I know what happened to the money. The six dollars Mom lost.� �Do you?� �She gave it to Mr. Drendip.� �Who?� �He�s the old man at the grocery store who puts the stuff in the bags at the end of the checkout table. He got refired. Mom told him congratulations on getting refired.� Chapman raised an eyebrow. �Do you mean �retired?� � �Yeah. I guess. Anyway he carried the bags out to Mom�s car and put them in the trunk the way he always does. Mom told him she hoped he had a good time not working and thanked him for all the times he helped her carry groceries. She reached in her change purse and gave him a five dollar and a one dollar all mashed up. She said to Mr. Drendip that she was sorry, but it was all the money she had on her.� Chapman sucked his teeth and listened intently to Pryn�s ramble. �And how do you know that was the missing money?� �Because Mom didn�t write it down in her little notebook. And she writes everything down in that notebook, so I noticed that was the time she forgot to write in the notebook. I reminded her when we got in the car and then she said her pen was out of ink and she�d write it when she got home. But I guess she forgot. I�m sure that�s the money.� Chapman nodded slowly. �Why haven�t you mentioned this before?� �I don�t know. I just didn�t.� �You saw how severely your mother was punished for losing that money?� Pryn shrank under her blanket and nodded. �Well,� Chapman Reynolds said after a beat, �there�s no reason to mention it now. I know about it. You�ve done your part and told me. I don�t want to hear another word about it. From here-on-out, it�s our secret. Yes?� Pryn nodded and exhaled. Chapman Reynolds turned out the light and left.
Oksana pulled Pryn awake. Pryn's consciousness fought her all the way. Pryn squinted through sleep-matted eyelashes to note the moonlight coming through her bedroom window. "What's wrong?" Pryn asked. "We have important company," Oksana whispered. "Say absolutely nothing and do everything your father or I tell you to do, as soon as we say it." "Why?" "Don't start with me, Prinadlez!" Oksana shook Pryn by the shoulders. She meant business. Daddy was in the living room holding Nick against his chest. Nick had dozed off into a limp-lipped lump. A man in a suit, almost as big as Daddy stood at attention. He regarded Pyrn with curious eyebrows. He stepped forward and touched Pryn's hair. She flinched backward. Daddy looked like he swallowed a bug. "Pryn," Oksana hissed. "Stay still!" "Not trained at all," tsked the large stranger in the suit. "And plenty old enough, Reynolds. What are you waiting for?" "I've been traveling a lot," said Daddy. "Prinadlez," said Oks with a big fake smile, "take off your clothes." The strange man raised his hand. "This is not necessary. I can see the texture of her skin. I can see the gloss of her hair. Her chin. Her neck. She is raw, but she is beautiful." The man looked down at Pryn and smiled. "You can go back to bed, sweetheart." Pryn looked at her mother. Oksana made sweeping "go away" motions with her fingers. Pryn thought she was supposed to tell the room "good night," but her mother explicitly told her not to talk. Pryn shuffled back toward the stairs and up to her room. As she was climbing she heard the voice of the stranger say, "You are still one short of the price of admission, Reynolds. You must get busy."
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FEBRUARY 2014 � Marcus went a bit nutso when an A-list celebrity was in the club. Even if there had been zero buzz from the rest of the staff, Polly would have known that Ben Afleck and Matt Damon were up on the secure floor by the tell-tale bead of stress sweat that crystallized on Marcus�s top lip. But there was always a buzz from the club rank-and-file when royalty was upstairs. Matt and Ben wanted to be left alone. They wanted to play cards with their other buddies and guests. They didn�t want girls to dance for them and they (mostly) pretended that they didn�t want girls to flirt with them now that they had settled down into marriages. The one thing they did want: Drinks. Perfect cocktails. Polly Dawson was an odd outlier at the club. She was a little bit front-of-house and a little bit back-of-house. She started out as an underchef prepping appetizers. Then came the night Kevin Spacey�s boyfriend asked for a drink called �The Bone� and threw a shit fit when he stumped the staff. Marcus asked the kitchen for help after Google failed him. Polly knew the recipe. After rescuing Marcus, she transitioned into becoming the anonymous bartender who mixed the drinks that made the celebrities say �Damn, this is the best fucking Manhattan I�ve ever had! What is in this? Who made this?� If the kitchen was buried, Polly donned her kitchen whites and picked up a knife. If orders were slow, Marcus had her change into her formals and sent her to unlock the overflow rail in the back of the club. The VIP lounge on the fourth floor had a dedicated rail stocked with obscure tequilas and rums, but if Marcus knew a celeb had a picky palate, he�d send the order downstairs to the KDS screen at Polly�s dark station near the red lounge where the wannabe musicians and rappers liked to gather. A few times Marcus had to push Polly into the VIP lounge, she having been summoned by important people who wanted to meet �the best damn bartender in the city.� Polly always waved awkwardly and said thank you, as she folded in on herself. She was a shrinking violet with a gift for mixology and a demeanor too meek to hang out with oversized personalities. This only endeared her to a core celebrity clientele. They had all the hangers-on they could handle and Polly, The Best Damn Bartender in the City, was a mousy waif who didn�t want anything from them. The Afleck/Damon poker nights came and went, but their celebrity guests spread the word of mouth that Capprizino�s was the place to get a quality buzz (and a lapdance from The Apple�s most select) without having to wade through a bunch of needy star-fuckers. Marcus flipped-out and introduced his slapjack to the first paparazzi brave enough to camp at the valet entrance on the side of the club. Capprizino�s had remained flashbulb free for almost a year. �You see him?� Joanie was half whispering and half singing. �No, but I heard.� Polly rolled up her sleeves and fished brandy snifters from the wash tub and lowered them gently to the sanitization dip sink.� Her corner of the club was so dark that KDS monitor and one blue LED rope behind the frozen vodka marble slab accounted for her only operational light. Polly could barely see her hand in front of her face when she came on shift, but her eyes adjusted as the night went on. �I�m totally going to fuck him,� Joanie whispered. Her eyes hadn�t adjusted to the dark backbar of RedRoom Two. She tried to read the label on a rum bottle by the trippy screensaver of the KDS monitor. �Marcus is totally going to fire you if you try,� Polly whisper-sung back. �Does this say Mount Gay or Mahiki Gold? I can�t see a damn thing. He asked for dancers,� Joanie explained. �Brunettes. Brenda is trading out with me. I�m going to rub that thick cock against my tonsils before the night is over.� �Good luck,� Polly muttered. �I know he�s your celebrity crush.�� Michael Fassbender was one of the few celebrities who both roommates agreed was sexy. Joanie had been obsessive about Fassbender ever since she saw him full-frontal in an indie movie called Shame. �Can you fucking believe it?� Joanie asked, �And he�s upstairs right now! If I get him behind the curtain can you catch the F-train home? I know you don�t like walking all the way down to Sixth Avenue by yourself at that hour, but this is the chance of a lifetime, Polls!� Polly clamped wet fingers on Joanie�s elbow. �I�m not kidding, Joanie. Don�t get fired. I can�t carry rent by myself.� �Polly!� Marcus�s close-quarters shout made both girls jump. �Shit, Marcus!� Polly�s hand draped over her cleavage. �Sorry,� Marcus said. �I�m a little stressed.� �Yeah, we know,� Joanie said. �What are you doing down here, Sheppard? I heard you were dancing in Brenda�s slot. Get in the shower. You smell like calamari. You have dancing clothes in your locker?� Joanie nodded. Marcus looked about to make sure no patrons were listening. �I heard he�s handsy. You okay with that?� �Oh, I can take one for the team, I�m sure,� Joanie smiled. �Yeah,� Marcus wrinkled his wide nose, �that�s what I was afraid of. Mind your place unless he takes you behind the curtain. Either way, I get 30% of your tip or you don�t go in.� Joanie gave a thumbs up. �Good, get upstairs,� Marcus said. �Polly, do you know how to make something called an Allspice Dram?� �Of course. I can make it traditional, or I can use pineapple juice in place of�� They both said �bitters� in unison. �That�s what he asked for,� Marcus nodded. �You scare me sometimes.� �One of these days you�re going to have to pay me what I�m worth to this club,� said Polly. Marcus raised his palms in frustration. �If you�d clean up a little and fix that hair, I could move you upstairs to The Premiere Room.� Polly smiled. �My regulars would miss me, and then where would you be?�
Marcus slipped behind Polly and whispered in her ear. �Hey, we�ve got a problem. I need you to cover the rail up in The Premiere.� �I told you, Marcus,� Polly was nose-to-chest with the muscular black man, �that�s not my scene. I don�t need the whales and their incessant spew of bullshit talk and motormouth head games.� �I�m not asking,� Marcus said. �I�m telling. Kristi just walked on us. I need my best girl to cover the room. Please, Polly. I need you upstairs behind the stick.� �Kristi walked? Why?� �Not important.� �Marcus?� Marcus took a deep breath. �Some of� Some friends of our featured guest got a little out of hand. They are a rowdy crew up there. One of them pinched her breast. She walked.� �Bullshit,� Polly said. �Kristi gets her tit pinched every other night. It goes with the room.� Marcus nodded. �Yeah, I know. This guy � not Fassbender, one of his jagoff friends � made it more than a regular grope. Kristi said he left a bruise. He�s a dick. He got a talking to. But Kristi was steamed. She is either already to the subway or she�s not answering her phone. Can you help me out? Please, Polly? Our featured guest was impressed with your drink. You should have been primary on the room anyway, if only so I don�t have to keep running down here for refills.�
Polly smiled. She was not happy, but she smiled for the room. Marcus was right, Michael Fassbender was charming. He pulled himself off the couch long enough to walk over and compliment Polly on the Allspice Dram. His eyes dipped down and mapped Polly�s chest for a brief beat. �There was an ancient bloke at the public house where my da and ma worked in Ireland,� Fassbender said. He cocked an elbow onto the bar and slouched his shoulder in a debonair slant as he held forth. �My da was a kraut and my ma potatoes. Whenever they�d get chuffed with one another, one of their epic blow-outs, the staff would scurry like mice until they reconciled. I was one of those mice, as you might guess. Anyway, this bartender bloke with more hair coming out his ears than he had on his pate, he�d make an Allspice Dram for my ma and my da. Bloody drink was the only thing those two could agree on. Something about the damn concoction was half way between Baden-W�rttemberg and Dublin. Always put out their fire and got them talking to one another like civilizeds.� �And you?� Polly asked. �How did you come to be a fan of the Allspice?� Fassbender flared his top lip into a comical flap of a sheepish child. �Well I had to learn the magic before the old bartender kicked this mortal coil, didn�t I? Somebody had to know the secret sauce or they�d likely kill each other one day. Now it just tastes like Christmas. I get in a homesick rut 'round this time of year.� �I�m glad you enjoy the drink,� Polly said in her sweet-but-formal way. �Bloody hard enough to find somebody who knows how to mix the dusty concoction,� Fassbender said, �Bloody impossible to find somebody who will go the last mile and swap pineapple for the pear juice.� �Sweet is overrated,� Polly winked. �Better with a bit of tang.� �Aren�t we all, Luv?� Fassbender lifted his glass to Polly with a wicked smile and returned to his friends on the couch. When the man leaned back and stretched his legs into a diagonal, Polly/Pryn realized why she had been attracted to him in the first place; He reminded her of Daddy. The chin. The high forehead. The swagger. Unlike Daddy, Mr. Fassbender�s skin was a bit suspect under close scrutiny. And, while Mr. Fassbender was tall and fit, Daddy was taller and daddy was a brick shithouse of a man. But there was a thing, a something that reminded her of Daddy. A twinkle in his eye, perhaps. �WHOOOP! New set of tats!� The red haired asshole who Marcus had warned Polly about slapped his hand on the counter. �An� it looks like you�ve got an impressive set of torpedoes taped down under your top there. What thhhhh fuck is thah? Taping down perfectly good tats?� �You�re cheeky,� the man slurred, squinting as if he were reeling from an insult. He was older and physically slubbish. His knit shirt came from a chain store and the weight of the mobile phone in the chest pocket created the illusion that he had one sagging breast. Not an actor. Not a contemporary of Fassbenders. He had to be an agent or a producer. Probably producer. Producers were almost always dicks. �Las� cunt they �ad up here coodn�t take a fookin� joke. Cahn yew take a f-f-ffooking joke, Luv?� �Of course, sir,� Polly answered with a polite tilt of her head. �Where would you like to go?� The man smiled. Then he stopped smiling and arched his eyebrows. �The f-f-fook yew just say t� me?� Before Polly could riposte, the door opened and Charlene, one of the professional escorts exclusive to the club, strut into the room wearing thigh-high boots and a molded leather bustier that only covered her crotch and the front of her tits. The back was open, but Charlene had two rows of body piercing rings along her spine from her waistline to her shoulder blades. A black silk ribbon zig-zagged between the rings on each side of her bare spine in a laced-up manner that made it look as if it paired with the bustier around Charlene�s front half. It was a mind-blowing effect. Joanie swayed in behind her. She wore the Zatanna magician girl costume she had bought last Halloween, complete with fishnets and a starched white prop collar that served no purpose but to keep her sparkling black halter from inadvertently falling down to her navel. The idea that Joanie had kept that repurposed Halloween costume in her club locker for the last four months, just in case she got the chance to strip for a celebutard in The Premiere Room� It was hysterical. Polly covered her mouth with her fingers and tried to suppress a case of the giggles. Marcus�s muscle-buddy Kevin was security detail at The Premiere's door. He pointed Charlene to one of the dancing poles and Joanie to the other. Mr. Fassbender and his nine horny guests watched the slut parade march across the room and assume their platforms. Polly�s problematic producer craned his neck like a barn owl to follow every step. Kevin pointed a meaty index finger at Polly and she pressed the play button on the music server under her bar.� A dance-mix version of Craven�s Promise Me thumped out of speaker towers near the two stages and Joanie�s wrists crossed over her head while her hips popped to the bass line. As if on some unseen, sitcom-quality cue, all ten men in The Premiere stopped looking at the dancers and turned back to their previous conversations at exactly the same time. Polly�s redheaded pest turned his beady eyes back toward Polly and locked them into another long glare at her chest. �Too bloody tall,� said the man. �Fookin� Yanks and yer fookin� Amazons. Give me a lass a bit more compact. Compact and curvy.� The man�s tongue seemed overtasked with keeping his saliva behind his teeth and the shadow of it flitted wildly about his mouth. �I like the wee lasses with ample tat, like yerself.� Inside, Polly was still reeling with the shock of how abruptly the men had insulted Charlene and Joanie with their collective indifference. On the outside she maintained her professional smile. �Why thank you, sir. That is very flattering.� �Paul,� the man winked. Polly nodded politely. �Thank you, Paul.� �Looks like the boys�d rather see a real girl like yerself slip your knickers than these pitiful excuses for stretched-out trallopmuffs,� Paul said. Polly clinched her teeth. Her jaw muscle quivered with the words she couldn�t say. Then she smiled. �I�m sure that was meant as a compliment, Paul. Thank you.� Paul�s expression turned dark. �Doan y�fookin� patronize me, you haughty coont.� �Certainly not my intention, Pau�Owch! Fuck!� Paul�s stubby mitt had locked into a vice grip pinch on the tip of Polly�s left breast. �Wassmatt, luv? Not so high and mighty now, yer highness?� Polly managed to keep both of her palms down on the bar. She didn�t swat Paul away and she couldn�t pull away from the determined pinch. Polly locked sightlines with Paul and willed any hint of pain from her face. Paul waited for Polly to react. She gave him nothing. After a beat, Paul dialed up his insistence on a reaction by pinching Polly�s nipple harder through her shirt and twisting his wrist sadistically. �Tat as numb as yer coont, Precious?� Polly didn�t blink. From her periphery she saw Kevin had assessed the situation from his station at the door and started for Paul with an angry look. Polly shot Kevin a glance and raised her palm to stop his approach. She looked back at Paul. �How is it, Paul?� Polly asked. �Everything you wanted it to be?� �I�ve had better.� Spittle sprayed from Paul�s slack jaw. �Not damn likely,� Polly said. �My girls are flawless. Perhaps your sample size is too small. Here, try �em in stereo.� She pulled Paul�s free hand to her right breast. Paul overcame a short staccato of surprise and clawed the new tit like a stress ball. Polly�s eyelid twitched with the pain, but that was all. She smiled. �Nice. Reminds me of how my little brother used to go at them when he was twelve.� The room had noticed Paul�s overstep right away, but Polly had been too focused to realize it. Fassbender was already off the couch and quickstepping towards them when Paul dropped his grip on Polly�s tits and slapped her across the face.� Joanie and Charlene heard the crack over the dubstep music and stopped dancing. Fassbender pushed Paul sideways. �Easy, mate! Fucking easy! Not sporting to break merchandise you �aven�t paid for!� Polly blinked the shock away and waved her fingers to stop another advance from Kevin. For his part, Paul snapped out of his fury and realized he had fucked up. He seemed more concerned with apologizing to save himself from Kevin than because he'd hit Polly.� �Aw Christ, I�m in my cups, Michael. I�m a fookin� sot, I am. I better take it back to the hotel on me own.� �Yes,� said Fassbender. �Do that before Tarzan there dishes the rest of us the leftovers from your proper thrashing. That�s it, mate. On the morrow.� Kevin hooked an impatient hand under Paul�s armpit and accidentally bounced him off the doorframe on their way to the elevator. �Bloody sorry about that, luv,� Fassbender said to Polly. �I�ll make sure Marcus gives you proper compensation for my idiot compatriot.� Yeah, compensation minus thirty percent, Polly thought.� �Don�t sweat it, Sir,� she said. �Happens all the time.� Fassbender looked her up and down again, his crooked grin fishhooked into something hungry, yet uncertain. �Frankly luv, while I don�t condone his methods, I can�t fault the man on his eye for talent. Your little punk-rocker meets girl-next-door thing has a definite allure.� Polly�s eyes pushed over Fassbender�s shoulder. Joanie and Charlene were yo-yoing their panties to their thighs and back up to flash their pussies. Their breasts were already bare and their nipples stiff with the insistence of February into the big room. The men took no notice of the bare vaginas. Fassbender took Polly�s look at the dancers as the question it was intended to be. �Oh they�re fine. Beautiful lasses. Marcus always brings me what I ask for, but he doesn�t always understand what it is that I really want. Whether it�s an Allspice Dram with pineapple bitters or a shy bit of wee sexy with kaleidoscope hair.� �Sometimes it�s best when things aren�t overproduced,� Polly said. �Exactly,� Fassbender said. �Wait, that wasn�t a dig at Future Past, was it?� Polly laughed. �What�s your name, luv?� Fassbender asked. �Polly.� �Polly." Fassbender let the name move back and forth across his tongue. "Polly, supposing there was a price -- a dollar amount, as you Yanks say -- to slough your kit, Polly. Supposing there was a number that could move you to show the goods to me and my mates. Supposing you and I could come to terms. Then what?� �I don�t understand.� �What skills might a shy, nude Polly have if we pulled her out from behind the comfort zone of her bar station? Can you dance?� Polly blinked. �I can dance for men.� �Well yes, luv, that is sort of the point, isn�t it?� �No. You don�t understand. I didn�t say that I�d dance in front of a bunch of Y-chromosome apes with dicks. I said that I can dance for men. I�m a girl who knows how to dance for men, but that implies that there are males in this room who even know what to do with a girl who knows her place. You know. Men.� Fassbender blinked. �Anybody can admire a high-performance car,� Polly said, �but not everybody can drive one. Do we have any drivers in this room?� A lecherous grin took Fassbender�s jaw and his eyes twinkled. �Get your clothes off, Polly.� �How much? What�s your price?� �Fuck you. This isn�t a negotiation any more. Get your fucking clothes off, Polly. Your muscle is down on the curb pushing Paul into a cab right now and there is precious little to keep the rest of us from tearing into you like a pack of jackals on a prairie rabbit.� Polly nodded. This was a man who understood her. This was a man who was worthy to serve. Her chipped black fingernail polish was a stark contrast to her crisp white shirt as she popped her first button while looking Fassbender in the eyes. � |
OCTOBER 1996 � Oks tilted the shiny credit card to reflect the kitchen track lights into Pryn�s eyes. �Are you ready?� Oks asked. �We�re going to put a hurt on Daddy�s wallet today, you and me.� �Is Nick coming with us?� �Nope. Not today. He�s staying with Daddy. We�ve got an assignment from Daddy and he�s our boss. We need to concentrate on the task at hand. Are you ready to shop until you drop, Pryn Reynolds?� Pryn smiled. �Here�s another question,� Oks organized her purse on the kitchen island counter. �Do you remember the dance I taught you? Our dance?� Pryn nodded, �I�m the Only One.� �No,� Oks looked up. �That�s my song. I mean the Real McCoy one. Another night another dream and always you.� �We dance to both songs,� Pryn said. �Don�t get offended, little one. We dance to both songs, but the fast one is yours and the slow one is mine.� �I don�t understand,� Pryn said. �You will. We learned that dance for a reason. After we get back with our haul of new clothes, we�re both going to model our new clothes for Daddy and then we�re going to dance for him.� �Why?� �Because we can only keep the clothes Daddy likes. The rest have to go back. So you better sell every outfit when you show it to Daddy or you�ll lose it.� �I don�t understand.� �I know. I�ll show you what I mean.� �What about dancing? I don�t understand the dancing.� Oks jingled her car keys, and tilted her head toward the garage. �When we show Daddy our clothes, at the very end we will show him our underwear that we are going to buy today, and when we are wearing the very last pair of underwear we are going to dance for Daddy. First you and then me. That�s how Daddy wants it and that�s what we�re going to do for him. Make sure you take your dance seriously or you will get us both in trouble. My butt just recovered from the last time I pissed your father off and I�m in no hurry to see his bothered side again.� � |
022014: DAWSON,P. (exct) F: #1661 � Q: I�m not getting this. This was some kind of fashion show or was it a strip tease? A: Yes. Seriously, Mom must have bought me over fifty outfits that day and probably thirty for herself. She was buying outfits one or two sizes too big for me, so she must have been planning for another long stretch with Daddy either working or living with his other family. There haven�t been that many times in this girl�s life where I was exhausted from shopping to the point where I begged to quit and go home, but that day was one of them. Mom kept us marching from store to store. I remember we had to make a bunch of trips to the car just to offload our bags so we could go back and shop for more. We came home and I crashed. I took an epic nap. Mom cooked dinner and then I made Daddy a drink. He went into the living room and sat in the big Queen Anne wingback chair. Another one of Daddy�s thrones. He had turned all the lampshades so the bulbs were pointing toward the Persian rug in the middle of the room. All the shades were drawn and it was very dramatic. He assumed his Daddy Chair and bounced Nick on his knee with one hand while he sipped the Sazerac I mixed him with the other. Mom turned on a mix tape of upbeat songs she recorded off the radio. Q: And then you walked the runway for your father�s approval. A: Exactly. Mom tried to teach me how to strut right toward Daddy. Then stop. Then put my hand on my hip and pop my breast, if I�d had any breast to pop. Then swoosh around and show Daddy my butt. Then a quarter turn where I stepped my foot out and smiled at Daddy over my shoulder. Then six steps away from Daddy and then a half turn back. Daddy would either nod or shake his head no. If he shook his head no, I had to take off the outfit and stack the clothes in a pile to go back to the store. Q: Tried? A: What? Q: You said your mother �tried� to teach you how to pose. That means you didn�t do it the way she wanted? A: Oh. Right. No. Not at first. I kind of forgot what my mom said about �selling� Daddy on the outfits. I walked to the middle of the carpet and spun around aimlessly. I didn�t pay attention to the music. I looked at Daddy and he scowled and shook his head no. After four or five time in a row of that, Mom shook my arm when I came back to our dressing room. She was pissed. �Watch me!� she growled. She ran through the poses with me one more time. �Now you look around the corner and watch how I sell Daddy on this outfit. Watch!� Mom put on a dark grey pencil skirt and some sassy red pumps. She slipped on a baggy floral top that I thought looked ridiculous with the skirt. The blouse was too Springtime for the season and too casual for the pleats in the skirt. She walked out to the living room. I peeked around the corner and observed while she absolutely rocked it. She swaggered right at Daddy with a big, sexy smile on her face. Then she did the thing with her hand on her hip and popped her breasts forward. She swept around and swooshed her butt at him like a peahen trolling for peacock. She looked back over her shoulder at Daddy with a smoldering glare that was dripping with pure animal lust. She took her six steps to the center of the Persian and turned around and waited for Daddy with one foot back and one toe of the other shoe elegantly pointed into the rug. Daddy was practically drooling. Looking back from my adult perspective, Nick was probably sitting on Daddy�s giant hard on. Daddy had a hungry look in his eyes. He smiled and nodded. Mom pirouetted and sashayed past me on her way back to our dressing room. �Like that,� she whispered. Obviously I didn�t have those kinds of swishy sex poses at six-and-a-half years old. But I finally understood what she meant about �selling� Daddy on my outfits. I don�t remember what the next outfit was, but I remember coming to complete stops and making very deliberate poses while I looked at Daddy�s eyes with my interpretation of the sexy expression my mom used. I�m sure I looked ridiculous. I remember hearing the soundtrack music for the first time and timing my steps to stop on the beats, or the end of a phrase of lyrics. I counted out six steps and turned around and attempted another smoldering gaze at Daddy. He had a funny smile on his face. I thought he was going to crack up. But then he raised his Sazerac like he was making a toast and he nodded yes. And that was that. I had earned my first swag from Daddy using my body. Q: And your adult self realizes this was part of a grooming process that was wrong and messed-up, right? A: Ha! Doc, the fashion show was the most wholesome part of the evening. I ran out of outfits and had to walk out and pose in nothing but pairs of panties Mom had bought in five-packs. I was too young for even a training bra. Mom was my adult counterpoint with matching bra-and-panty sets from Fredrick�s, but I was posing in nothing but little girl panties. Q: And your father? A: My father what? Oh, I don�t think had a pedo response to me, Doc. I didn�t look much different than Nick at that age. I was just the� what do you call the guy at a TV show studio taping who comes out and keep the audience charged up while they change the sets or fix the lights? The warm-up comedian? That�s what I was. I was the warm-up tramp who filled in while Mom was changing into her next outfit. Mom was the show. Eventually I was down to my final pair of panties and I did my dance for Daddy to that awful Real McCoy�s song. Thank God that group came and went from popular music. I still cringe when I hear that song. I guess my dance was supposed to be sexy, but I didn�t know sexy at six. It was merely a dance recital for Daddy. Q: In your underwear. A: Yep. In my underwear. Daddy smiled and nodded and clapped his hands at best he could around squirmy Nick, who was trying to get down and go play somewhere more entertaining than Fashion Central. I got mad that I was dancing my heart out and Nick was not only not paying attention, but he was distracting the paying customers, so to speak. When my song was over Daddy kissed me, told me to run and make him another drink and get back before Mommy did her dance. I did. Then I turned off the tape, put her CD in the boombox and pressed play on Mom�s Melissa Etheridge song. Q: The Only One? A: Yeah. That is a fucking sexy song. It�s got a stripper backbeat on it. A great seduction song. Anyhow, Daddy called me up on his lap and I sat on one leg and Nick on the other� Q: Still in your underwear? A: Still in my panties and no shirt. Most of the time, by bedtime I was supposed to be in an oversized T-shirt with no panties. Ironic that it was the opposite that night. Anyway. Out comes Mom from the hallway wearing a classic pinup sex kitten outfit: Garters clipped to fishnets. Five inch patent leather heels that were as shiny as polished obsidian. No panties, just a little tuft of her red-golden pubic hair. And a demi-cup bra that showed most of her big knockers. Including her nipples. I got Mom�s nipples. Big, pale pink puffies. Q: That�s not necessary. We should probably keep the minutia level to details that are a bit less personal. A: That�s what guys call �em, Doc. Puffies. Torpedo tits. Q: Okay. Okay. Moving on. A: Little Nick saw Mom�s bare tits and he thought they were hysterical. He laughed and pointed. �Boobies!�� Mom focused on Dad. That woman could fucking dance. She had some kind of training but I don�t know if it was formal dance instruction or if some other Russian hooker taught Mom geisha moves when she was a girl. But fuck! She was hypnotic. Mom taught me her moves over my years as I progressed as Daddy�s whore. As you might have guessed, that night was my first dance for Daddy, but it certainly wasn�t the last. As I got older, the last underwear outfit I wore while I danced my feature song got trampier, and the evening ended with me down on my knees sucking his cock, not up on his knees. One of things Mom taught me was that most girls dance from their hips and their necks. Mom showed me how to dance from my wrists and from the insteps of my feet. That sounds stupid, but it works. The hips and neck follow anyway. If a girl concentrates on her wrist and the instep of her foot, it elevates her sexymeter tenfold. Mom taught me that when you shake your ass for a man, the shake comes from this strip of your stomach here, right below your boobs. Crazy right?� You control your butt with your high midriff? But it�s true. If you think about here when you dance, it translates to being sexy here. It creates a countersway. That�s what Mom called it. And those wrists. Mom is tiny and she has really small hands, but her wrists are even smaller. Even though her hands are little, those Popsicle stick wrists of hers make it look like her hands are bigger than they are. Mom dances like her wrists are tied with a length of invisible elastic, like they can only ever be so far apart before the music forces them back together. She dances like her feet are either slipping into or out of a bunch of invisible empty shoes on the floor. Daddy loved the way Mom danced and I can see why. It�s electric to have a man spun up in a suppressed lust frenzy. When you are a submissive girl like Mom and me, that�s the only real power you have: winding men up until it looks like their zipper is going to break under the pressure of their swollen cocks. Daddy practically threw Nick and I into our beds that night so they could get busy. � |
� �Oh my,� Fassbender said as Polly�s bra slid from her shoulders. �Those are an impressive set of mams, Polly.� Jakey, are you seeing this?� The men who had no interest in Charlene and Joanie all stared laser beams at Polly�s tits. There were red marks where Paul had mauled them. Polly knew her own abuse physiology well enough to know that the purple on her left tit where Paul had twist-pinched would form in a corona around her pink aureole in an hour. She knew the pattern the purple blotches would take. Her right tit wouldn�t bruise any more than the red handprint that was already visible, but that�s the one that would still be barking sore when she dressed for tomorrow night�s shift. She knew these things as certainly as she knew the subway schedule. �Those are something else,� Jake said from his chair. �Fucklot bigger out than they were in,� said another man. Fassbender nodded, �Our Polly here is a mysterious bag of tricks. She can have a Thomas hanging under that skirt and I�m not sure I�d give two fucks as long as she has perfect puffy tits like these.� Fassbender�s cold palms pressed into Polly�s tit flesh and closed into pulsing clamps. Polly/Pryn did not break eye contact. She pushed the zipper of her midi down her ass crack and pulled at the waist buttons until the skirt dropped into a limp black snood on the floor. �Garters!� Shouted Jake. �So much for both punk rock and girl-next-door, Mike!� �Did. Not. See. That. Coming,� Fassbender said over his shoulder. The men laughed. To Polly: �You�re quite the Girl Guide to be so prepared.� �I dress the way my mother taught me,� Polly said. Fassbender laughed. �I�m afraid to ask, but I think I will anyway.� �She�s a housewife,� Polly said, �in Louisville.� �Well isn�t that just nine kinds of perfect. The panties, luv. They�re thwarting the very fabric of my limited imagination. Lose them.� Polly fingered a roll of black lace around the curve of her buttocks and then moved them outside the garters with a quick flash of unclippings and reclipping to her pantyhose. Panties dropped on top of Polly�s Jessica Simpsons. Instead of kicking the panties, Polly stepped out of her shoes and stepped onto the top of Fassbender�s Cole Haan Venetians. Her hands reached up to lace behind Fassbender�s neck. �You going to dance with me, Daddy?� Polly asked. Indeed, standing in stocking feet on the tops of Fassbender�s shoes, that�s exactly the visual Polly invoked. Fassbender�s hands pushed around Polly�s waist and mapped he globe of her ass cheeks. �No, you�re going to dance for Daddy and all Daddy�s mates, luv,� Fassbender said. Kevin McMuscles and Marcus keyed back through The Premiere door at that moment. Marcus blinked rapidly, as if he had accidentally barged into the wrong hotel room. �Anything for you, Daddy,� Polly said. The synth piano of Bruno Mars Young Girls crossfaded into the playlist with all the subtlety of a bank vault door clanking shut. Polly danced with her insteps, kicking fouette spins that closed distance to the couch. She hopped on the glass coffee table. She allowed herself a quick glance at Joanie. Joanie returned a look that was nothing short of murderous. Polly danced like her mother taught her. She zig-zagged back and forth between the couch and the coffee table with practiced choreography. While on the couch, she kicked one pointed stocking toe to the back cushion and leaned in-and-out with an S-wave that momentarily tickled Jake�s nose with her honey muff hair. Then she was airborne back to the coffee table with an effortless jete into an a la seconde spin. Polly�s ass cocked left. Then right. Then it took a hypnotic sway that pulled the rest of her torso into a tight flag ripple. Polly looked over her shoulder. Marcus�s eyes were huge. Kevin McMuscles absently rubbed the bulge in his pants. Polly sneered at them for no other reason than to switch to a sexy smile when she pointed her nose at the men circling her. They noticed. Polly snapped into a handstand on the glass coffee table and flamingoed one pointed toe to the ceiling and the other leg bent into a perfect semaphore; an upside down pinup girl. Her elbows lowered into a press. Her heels kicked and snapped her entire body into a spring toward the handsome older man with blond hair in the padded chair. Her calves slapped hard into each arm of the chair and her hands popped down on each shoulder of the man. The move startled him. Then Polly spun her heels under her knees and pressed her tits into the man�s face. The room erupted in hoots and applause. The man with the blond hair overcame his shock and latched an open mouth on Polly�s nipple.� Polly rolled her head around her neck and whipped her hair into a spin. She pumped up and down on her knees as if she were trying to escape the suction of the man�s mouth but could not. Polly looked up at the man in the Brooks Brothers suit standing behind the blond man�s chair. With her palm she lifted her unsuckled tit and with her fingers she wiggled and invitation for Mr. Suit to lean over and take it in his mouth. He did without hesitation. Polly arched her back until the tips of her hair brushed her stockinged heels and her nipples pulled out of the men�s mouth like two champagne bottles uncorking. Polly sprang at Brooks Brothers, collided with his chest, and then spun around him as if the man were a tree or a stripper pole. With both knees in his back and her hands on his shoulders, she launched over his head, catching the back of his neck in the crook of her knee. Polly�s face bounced to a stop at Brooks Brothers� zipper; inverted again. Polly saw the gun in the man�s waistband for the first time and realized he was Fassbender�s personal security. She picked him because he looked like he had the frame and the rigidity to withstand her gymnastic move. She realized he would probably be the last one in the room receptive to having his cock pulled out of his pants. Too late. She was committed. Polly unzipped the pants with her teeth and waited for Brooks Brothers to protest. He didn�t. Her little hand snaked between the zipper teeth and pulled out a thickening cock shaft. Pryn was taken aback at the cock her hand unsheathed through the zipper. The shaft was thick and average in length. The cockhead ballooning to hardness was freakish; it was the size of a cat's head. Brookes Brothers' cock looked like an apple on a stick. It was the shape of cock that made girls cream from their pussies. Almost more fist than dick. Hooting stopped. Clapping stopped. Polly thought she could hear the men gasp above the sound of the thumping speakers. Her index fingers ran up and down the sides of the cock while her upside-down tongue fluttered against the warm tip of Brooks Brothers� zepplin cockhead, rising to meet her. "Trev, I hate to pull rank on you," said Fassbender, "but I think I'll take our Polly to the back room and work some of that surplus energy out of her." Fassbender grabbed Polly by her waist and flipped her, stockings-down and onto the floor. "Just you?" Polly asked. "I'm plenty enough," Fassbender said. "Seems like kind of a waste of girl, doesn't it? Just one man?" Pryn thought about how nice it would be to work a cock with her mouth while the engorged head on Brookes Brothers' prick ran roughshod over the g-spot in the top of Daddy's pussy. No wait... Her pussy. It had been so long since she had a man with the right equipment and the right know how to make her lose her mind. Never mind that the last man to make her black out with an orgasm had been her father. "Chalk it up to the celebrity lifestyle," Fassbender said, taking Pryn's hand and walking her toward the beaded curtain. "We seem to exceed at excess." � |
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