I mean, I’m not going to move back in with a hooker, naturally. Especially not with the new pad I have.
But I need to make things right with Karissa. I have no idea how, but I’m going to do my best.
The man with the towel over his waist is there as always. He just smiles at me. A fly lands in his white beard.
I stifle an urge to vomit.
There it is, ahead of me. The door I called home for a brief while. I would like to get back the paltry few pieces of clothing I left here, too. There was one print top I especially liked.
I take a deep breath and knock on the door.
Nothing but silence. The courtyard doesn’t make a sound. The man in the towel doesn’t make a sound, just smiles.
Everything tilts oddly, like I’m seeing it through a bent lens. What’s up with that?
Then it all rights itself again. WTF?
A ball of anger rises inside of me. I knock again, harder this time.
Nothing.
I take out my key and try putting it in the lock, but it doesn’t fit. Shit, the lock has been changed. She changed the fucking lock! The bitch!
Now I’m mad.
I bang on the door.
“Karissa!” I shout. “Open up! I want to talk to you!”
Shit, the sun is desperate today and the dew point is so high I might vaporize.
I pound on the cheap door.
“Yo, Karissa! Hey! Yo! Open up!”
Nothing.
Another pounding.
“Karissa, I’ve got stuff in there! If you don’t want to talk to me, at least let me have my things!”
The door finally begins to open.
Oh, thank God.
I’m about to launch into a big spiel about how we fell out of touch, but the person who greets me at the door makes me take three steps back.
He’s a big black man about the size of Delaware. His hair has a carved part in it, but that’s the only sense of style about him. He’s dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. I take another step back.
“What the fuck is your problem?” he says.
“Oh,” I say, “um . . . I thought . . . I was just looking for Karissa. Is she in?”
“I don’t know no fucking Karissa.” He looks me up and down. His mean demeanor softens as he leans on the door. Then he smiles.
“This is her place. She lives here.”
“Not anymore she don’t. This is my place. I just moved in. But seeing as you’re a friend of the previous tenant, I’m more than happy to have you in.”
Shit.
I’ve got to get the fuck out of here.
I don’t even wait for my slow brain to think of anything to say. I just run to the taxi and tell the driver to take me back to the beach.
As we pull away, I catch a glimpse of the man in the towel.
He’s just smiling at me.
Shit.
Where the fuck is Karissa?
Chapter 12
I’m in a suite at the British Colonial Hilton in downtown Nassau, laying prone on the bed, which is covered by a tarp. Wet strokes dance this way and that all over my body as the artist paints me.
Lorena flew in Karl Werz, a sixty-ish pony-tailed man in a white pirate shirt open to his waist, who is supposedly the world’s foremost body paint artist. He doesn’t seem to be fazed in the least by my nakedness, fully absorbed in his meticulous brush strokes.
Gotta admit, I love the sensations. I mean, you know me by now, right? Pretty much anything sparks my girl down below to life. I’m doing my best to channel the ever-growing sexual energy into mental rehearsal of what I need to do tonight.
Seduce Lukas Thorn.
That’s my mission.
Holy shit.
I take a deep breath and count to ten, trying to control my breathing. Two weeks ago, I was a struggling waitress, worried about getting ketchup to table six and making sure the soup is hot enough for table four. Now I’m a professional seductress for hire, about to walk into a parade wearing nothing but body paint.
Karl Werz steps back from me, squints, grunts, and then mixes a new color, adding a finishing touch.
One more step backwards, and then he raises his eyebrows.
“Gut,” he says, “I zink zat’s it.”
I lean up on my elbows. “Can I get up?”
“Ja. Ve are done.” He motions to the mirror.
I close my eyes, swing myself off the tarp, and take the three steps to the ornate three-way mirror. Lorena nearly glows as she gazes at me with a huge smile. She takes a fake puff from her cigarette-less holder.
“Unbelievable,” she says. “Karl, I think you’ve outdone yourself this time.”
I gasp and put my hands up to my mouth at the sight greeting me.
The person I see in the mirror . . . isn’t even a person. It’s some sort of water-nymph creature. I’m completely indigo. Painted on the middle of my body from my breasts downward is an elaborate design that looks somewhat like a short dress that’s part body wrap, part bikini that’s made out of leaves. Or are those waves? Or are those shells?
Whatever it is, it looks amazingly real. I swear I have clothes on, and yet I know I don’t. When I move left and right, it even appears to cast shadows, making it appear truly three-dimensional. How did he do that?
My lips are a fluorescent blue with sparkles that contrast sharply with the indigo of my skin. It matches my eye shadow and mascara. The contacts in my eyes glow a bright aquamarine. A sparkling gold flower adorns the temple by my right ear, blending seamlessly into my bluish-purple hair.
“Holy shit,” I say. “What am I?”
“Stunning,” says Lorena. “That’s what you are.”
“No, but what is this?” I turn to Karl Werz.
He just shrugs his shoulders. “Vater nymph?” he says. “Spirit mermaid? I know not. Mein verk ist complete.”
He begins packing up his kit of paint.
I turn to see my backside.
Oh my God, that looks real!
I swear I can almost feel the bristles of the . . . whatever they are . . . rubbing against my skin. I look like something out of a science-fiction or fantasy movie.
I turn to the other side. My butt looks amazing. The pounds I need to lose are delightfully hidden.
As is my pussy, of course. God, the very sight of my own self is, for once in my life, spectacular. I think I want to fuck me.
“This is incredible,” I say. “I can’t even tell I’m naked.”
“Zat is ze point,” says Karl Werz.
“Thank you!” I say. “Thank you so much.”
I go to give him a hug, but he reels from me with a shocked expression. “No, no, no! Give ze front a half an hour before you let anyzing touch it.”
“Oh, okay. I just wanted to thank you.”
“Frau MacCall has already zanked me for you. Quite handsomely, too.”
In five minutes, the odd man has everything into a large leather bag. He tosses on a three-corner hat straight from the eighteenth century, bows, and heads to the door without a word.
Once he’s gone, I turn to Lorena and make a happy squealing noise.
“You are going to be spectacular,” says Lorena. “There is no way Lukas Thorn can resist you.”
She gets up, moves over to her briefcase, and opens it up.
She takes out the earpiece headset with which we’ve practiced for the past two weeks and brings it over to me. She expertly fits it in my ear. It blends in seamlessly as the center of the golden flower.
Then she walks back to the briefcase, takes out the transmitter, and turns it on. I hear a tiny beep in my ear.
She turns away from me and speaks into it. “Can you hear me, Jayd?”
“Loud and clear.”
“Good.” She turns it off, walks over to me, and hands it to me.
I bite my lip, glancing in the mirror at the odd but very sexy creature glaring back at me from the netherworld.
“You know what to do. It’s showtime.”
Chapter 13
Lorena and I are in the back seat of a Mercedes-Benz driven by her bodyguard, Vargas. He’s the same tall bald man with the goatee that I used to see when he would pick her up at the restaurant.