Mmmmm.
These turn you on, do they?
Oh, we’re almost there.
It is a beautiful lobby, isn’t it? Almost as beautiful as my lips, wouldn’t you say?
Oh, the mouth on you.
Here we are. Push the up arrow, boyo.
What?
I wouldn’t worry about that. The antidote doesn’t matter. What matters is us. Together. Tonight. You, here with me. For… yeah, looks like eleven hours.
Ding.
Yes, Jason?
625. Why?
What are you-
You snap the one cuff around her wrist and the other around the car rail. You watch her eyes widen as you step back.
And the doors close.
The frantic pounding and clanging. The wail of betrayal.
Then you swear you can sense it: the faint tremor just beyond the range of human hearing.
Because the wail has stopped.
No need to worry about that antidote. You knew she’d made it up. Her security clearance doesn’t give her access to the hard stuff.
You unflip your cell. Dial the number that after a few security switches will connect you with a basement somewhere in Virginia.
All you have to do is make this phone call and you can hop your plane home to Philadelphia. Just two words, and you’ve earned your paycheck.
“It works,” you say.
ROPE-A-DOPEBY CRAIG McDONALD
Harcourt Street, a raucous downstairs bar: über meat market.
George has his eye on a woman-out of his league, but worst she can say is no.
And he knows this: Lonely women fear lonely weekends like death.
Friday, just after work. This, in his too-successful experience, is every lonely woman’s hour of least resistance.
Pints are guzzled by lookers in little black dresses who’ve spent their days skirting the boundaries of “casual Friday” good taste-sweaters or jackets between them and stern warnings from sundry Human Resources Nazis.
George signals the gaffer, points at the woman alone at the table near the door.
The keep nods and half-smiles, says, “Russian Quaalude.”
George Lipsanos scowls. “What the fuck kind of drink is that?”
The barkeep smiles and shrugs. “Obscure one: Frangelico, Bailey’s, and vodka. Honestly? Had to look it up.”
Impatient, George nods. “Send her a double.”
Lipsanos watches. The bartender serves the sleek stranger the drink. Questioned, he stabs a thumb at George.
The woman raises an eyebrow, lifts her glass, and nods at George.
Lipsanos is headed her way before her first sip.
As he approaches, she shifts her legs-long legs, already crossed. Her right foot now slips behind her left leg’s calf.
This woman was striking at thirty yards in dim light through a haze of cigarette smoke. At five feet, she’s a leggy wet dream: mocking green eyes, dark hair… chiseled chin… natural rack, and good thighs on full display in her tight-black, fuck-me-now-and-hard! dress.
George thinks… righteous, compliant sports fuck.
Or she soon will be.
She smiles at him-a sultry, mocking mouth. She sips her freaky cocktail, says: “’Tis himself. Ah, but he didn’t know my drink. Maybe doesn’t bode well.” Another sip, then, “You’re not Irish.”
George scowls, shakes his head: “No… I’m Greek.” He shrugs. “Came to ride the Celtic Tiger. Get some of that Y-2K paranoia action.” He omits the latest nuance: a lucrative leap to cyber-porn. Instead, George hefts his glass, butchering the pronunciation: “Sláinte!”
A husky chuckle. The woman smiles-deep dimples- and winks. “My father’s from Glencoe. You know… the Highlands? He’d a toast, ‘Here’s to you, as good as you are. Here’s to me, as bad as I am. And as bad as I am, and as good as you are, I’m as good as you are, as bad as I am.’”
George has trouble tracking that one. She drains her Russian Quaalude. She signals the bartender, raises her glass, and points at George.
She leans across the table, fingers tented, drawing elbows closer and deepening the dark, enticing valley between her high-riding breasts. “Guess I won’t hold it against you, then… not knowing my drink.”
“Yeah,” George says, “that’s good.” He puts out his hand. “I’m George.”
She squeezes his hand and sits back, breasts shifting under her dress. She tips her head to the side, dark hair slanting. “My name is the last thing on your mind. Let’s be honest, huh, George? Names truly important?”
He feels some sense of firm footing returning. Cocky, he says, “Called out at the right moment? Yeah… means more than Oh baby.”
Those dimples again. She sips her drink, points. “Gutsy, George. Joking about sex this early. Okay: You can call me Mell. Mell Mulloy.”
He puts out his hand again, squeezes hers and doesn’t let go-his thumb stroking the inside of her palm.
She says, “George. Hmm. Like the monkey, huh?”
“Say what?”
“The monkey… my favorite book as a kid, ya know? Curious George? The little chimp… man with the yellow hat?”
“Gotcha.” George bites his lip… sips his drink. Jesus: Best steer clear of books with this woman… literature-not his territory. The last one went on and on about “Joyce”… guaranteeing he’d never read thatbitch.
But the woman pushes: “Are ya, you know, curious… George?”
George’s kidneys are burning. Should have hit the head before he sent the drink to her. He bounces his left leg. Tries to come up with some response to her question. He fingers the engraved Zippo in the pocket of his sports jacket, says, “You smoke?”
“Not anymore.”
“Mind if I do?”
“Do it, George-secondhand smoke keeps me half-ass in the game.”
George lies: “Gotta get it in before the ban, yeah? I’m out… gotta get myself a new pack.”
He beelines for the men’s room. He shoulders up between pissed, pissing punters and lets go, his left kidney burning… even aching.
The pain subsiding, he washes up and hits the cigarette machine. He buys a pack of Regals that he’ll maybe get through in three or four weeks. He drops it in his pocket with the baggie of half-a-dozen tablets of Rohypnol-the “R2” that he figures to slip in Mell’s drink when she has to hit the head.
But before that, he’ll slip her the Ecstasy in his left pocket.
Yeah.
The E and the “Rope”-a profoundly powerful one-two… no woman could sustain against it.
Mell has a fresh drink waiting for George when he returns to their table.
George slides into his chair-freshly stricken: that face, those tits, those long legs… thinking about those legs wrapped around his ass… about Mell’s mouth, her sultry lips, groaning-and her not remembering-sucking.
“Drink up, George,” Mell says. “They’re gonna be playing our song in a minute.”
Compliantly, George downs his double Jameson and accepts her hand.
They find an empty space on the dance floor and begin moving together, his crotch tight to hers-a slow dance to Mark Knopfler: “On Raglan Road.”
George is dizzy.
And increasingly hard.
Mell clearly knows it too-stroking him through his sans-a-belt pants.
Punchy, his pants now a tent, George follows Mell back to their table. He doesn’t really sit so much as he falls into his chair.
George is sweating-even a little nauseous.
Strike that: really nauseous… sweating like a pig. He had loaded nachos about 4 p.m. He thinks of the sour cream slathered on the chips, then thinks, Jesus, it’s food poisoning!
But Mell has slipped off her right fuck-me stiletto, distracting George from his sour stomach. She’s massaging his crotch with her stockinged foot. She says: “Don’tcha think it’s time we go to your place? You do have a place, George?”