“Bery tense,” she said.
“I had this thing happen at work. Well, not at work, but I’m afraid I did something that could put everyone I know in danger, and I can’t make myself do what needs to be done to fix it. People could die.”
“That nice,” said Lotus Flower, kneading his biceps.
“You don’t speak English, do you?”
“Oh. Little. No worries. You want happy ending?”
Charlie smiled. “Can you just keep rubbing?”
“No happy ending? Okay. Twenty dollar, fifteen minute.”
So Charlie paid her, and talked to her, and she rubbed his back, and he paid her again, and he told her all the things that he couldn’t share with other people: all the worries, all the fears, all the regrets. He told her of how he missed Rachel, yet how sometimes he would forget what she looked like and would run to the dresser in the middle of the night to look at her photo. He paid her for two hours in advance and dozed off, feeling her hands on his skin, and he dreamed of Rachel and sex, and when he woke up Lotus Flower was massaging his temples and tears were running into his ears. He told her it was the menthol in the oil, but it was the lonely coming up in him, like the pain in his back that he hadn’t known he’d had until it was touched.
She massaged his chest, reaching over his head and letting her breasts rub against his face as she worked, and when he rose again under the towel, she asked, “You want happy ending now?”
“Nah,” he said. “Happy endings are so Hollywood.” Then he caught her wrists, sat up, kissed the back of her hands, and thanked her. He tipped her a hundred dollars. She smiled, put on her kimono, and left the cubicle.
Charlie dressed and left the Happy Relax Good Time Oriental Massage Parlor, which he had walked by a thousand times during his life, always wondering what was behind the red door with brown paper taped over the window. Now he knew: the pathetic puddle of lonely frustration that was Charlie Asher, for whom there would be no happy ending.
He made his way up to Broadway and headed up the hill into North Beach. He was only a few blocks from home when he sensed someone behind him. He turned, but all he saw was a guy a couple of blocks back buying a newspaper from a machine. He walked another half block and could see the activity on the street up ahead: tourists out walking, waiting for tables in Italian restaurants, barkers trying to lure tourists into strip clubs, sailors barhopping, hipsters smoking outside of City Lights bookstore, looking cool and literary before the next poetry slam, which would go off in a bar across the street.
“Hey, soldier,” a voice at his side. A woman’s voice, soft and sexy. Charlie turned and looked down the alley he was passing. He could see a woman in the shadows, leaning against the wall. She was wearing an iridescent body stocking or something and a mercury light at the other end of the alley was drawing a silver outline of her figure. The hair rose on his neck, but he felt something twinge in his loins as well. This was his neighborhood, and the hookers had been calling to him since he was twelve, but this was the first time he’d ever stopped and paid more attention than a wave and a smile.
“Hey,” Charlie said. He felt dizzy—drunk or stoned—maybe all the toxins had broken loose from the long massage, but he had to lean on his cane to steady himself.
She stepped away from the wall and the light silhouetted her, highlighting outlandish curves. Charlie realized he was grinding his teeth and his right kneecap began to bounce. This was not the street-worn body of a junkie—a dancer maybe, a goddess.
“Sometimes,” she said, hissing the last s, “a rough fuck down a dark alley is the best medicine for a weary warrior.”
Charlie looked around: the party a block ahead, the guy reading his newspaper under the streetlamp two blocks back. No one down the alley waiting to ambush him.
“How much?” he asked. He couldn’t even remember what sex felt like, but all he could think about right now was release—a rough fuck down a dark alley with this…this goddess. He couldn’t see her face, just the line of a cheekbone, but that was exquisite.
“The pleasure of your company,” she said.
“Why me?” Charlie said, he couldn’t help himself—it was his Beta nature.
“Come find out,” she said. She cupped her breasts, fell back against the wall, and propped one heel up on the bricks. “Come.”
He walked into the alley and leaned the cane on the wall, then took her uplifted knee in one hand, a breast in the other, and pulled her against him for a kiss. She felt like she was wearing velvet, her mouth was warm and tasted base, gamy, like venison or liver. He didn’t even feel her undo his jeans, just a strong hand on his erection.
“Ah, strong meat,” she hissed.
“Thanks, I’ve been going to the gym.”
She bit his neck, hard, and he squeezed her breast and thrust against her hand. She threw her uplifted leg around his back and pulled him hard against her. He felt something sharp, painful digging into his scrotum and he tried to pull away. She pulled him tighter with her leg. She was incredibly strong.
“New Meat,” she said. “Don’t fight me or I’ll tear them off.”
Charlie felt the claw on his balls and the breath caught in his throat. Her face was an inch from his now, and he looked for her eyes, but could see only an obsidian blackness reflecting the highlights from the streetlight.
She held her free hand in front of his face and he watched as claws began to grow out of her fingertips, reflecting the streetlight like brushed chrome, until they were three inches long. She poised them over his eyes and he reached for his sword-cane against the wall. She knocked it away, and the claws were at his face again.
“Oh no, Meat. Not this time.” She hooked a claw into his nostril. “Shall I drive it into your brain? That would be quickest, but I don’t want quick. I’ve waited so long for this.”
She released the pressure on his balls, and to his horror, he realized that he was still hard. She started rubbing his erection, pushing the claw deeper into his nose to hold him steady. “I know, I know—when you come, I’ll put it in your ear and yank. I’ve taken off a half a man’s head that way. You’ll like it. You’re lucky, if Nemain had been sent you’d be dead already.”
“Bitch,” Charlie managed to say.
She was stroking him harder and he was cursing his body for betraying him this way. He tried to pull away and her leg wrapped behind him crushed the breath out of him. “No, you come, then I’ll kill you.”
She pulled the claw from his nose and put it next to his ear. “Don’t make me leave unsatisfied, Meat,” she said, but in that instant her claw caught the side of his scalp and he hit her as hard as he could in the ribs with both of his fists.
“You fuckface!” she shrieked. She let her leg fall; yanked him aside by his penis, and reared back for a full slash of her claws to his head. Charlie tried to raise his forearm to take the blow, but then there was an explosion and a piece of her shoulder splattered on the wall, spinning her around.
Charlie felt her release his penis, and he threw himself across the alley. She rebounded off the wall with both claws aimed at his face. There was another explosion and she was knocked back again. This time she came up facing the street, and before she could brace to leap, two more shots hit her in the chest and she screeched, the sound like a thousand angry ravens set afire.
Five more quick shots and she was danced backward by the impacts; even as she went she was changing, her arms getting wider, her shoulders smoothing. Two more shots, and the next screech wasn’t even remotely human, but that of a huge raven. She rose into the night sky trailing feathers and spattering a liquid that might have been blood, except that it was black.