Martin Misunderstood

'Whatchu doin' outta jail anyway?' she asked. 'I thought you'd be in the electric chair by now.'

'It's lethal injection,' Martin corrected. 'Are you stealing office supplies?'

'Getting out while the getting's good,' she told him, trying to jam a ream of paper into her bag. 'Unique can read the writing on the wall.'

Martin cringed. She only ever spoke of herself in the third person when she felt threatened. He could still remember the first time he'd heard her do it. Martin had suggested that it was only fair that she clean the women's room as he was expected to clean up after the men. 'Unique don't clean toilets!' she had screeched.

He tried, 'Unique-'

'I don't need no trouble with the po-lice,' she told him. 'No way is Unique sticking around with the po-lice asking questions.'

'What kinds of questions?'

'I might have bought some clothes at the mall that one time that I didn't exactly pay for.'

Martin was outraged. 'You stole?'

She indicated her bright purple silk pantsuit. 'You think I can dress like this on what y'all pay me?'

Actually, he did.

'I got a look to uphold,' she told him, pushing Martin out of the way as she walked around to his desk. 'You don't go messing with a lady's wardrobe.'

Perhaps it was because of his own recent brush with the law, but Martin felt his outrage quickly turn into fascination. He had worked with this woman for three years without knowing that she was an actual thief. 'Did you get caught?'

'There might be a warrant out there somewhere. You know how it is.'

Had she winked at him? Martin thought she had. 'Yes,' he said. 'Having spent some time in jail myself, I understand.'

She looked at him, her lips pursed. Was that respect in her eyes?

'I fought the fishes,' he told her, trying out his jail-house lingo.

She turned skeptical. 'Fought them on what?'

'Well, you know, jail is very divisive. I had to hook up with the whites, you see. Immediately, you have to choose a posse.'

'Posse?'

He leaned on the edge of her empty desk. 'Peeps, you might have heard it called.'

She dumped a box full of invoices on the floor and started filling it with Post-it notes from Martin's desk. 'Did you really kill Sandy?'

'Well, I…' he fumbled for words. 'She teased me quite harshly.'

Unique stopped filling the box. 'You was mad after the dildo, huh? I saw it in your eyes when that rubber melted into your thumb.' She chuckled. 'I knew there was something more to you, Martin.'

Martin. She had called him Martin. Not Fool. Not Doughboy. Martin.

'She pissed you off, didn't she?'

The only thing he could think to say was, 'Live by the dildo, die by the dildo.'

Unique's eyes widened in shock. 'Did you rape her?'

He shrugged again, thinking this was the most attention she had ever given him. She was actually talking to him like a human being!

'Tell me what happened,' she whispered, letting him know that it was just between the two of them. 'I promise I won't tell nobody. Just for my own sake, let me know.'

'Well, I-'

'It was all about the sex, wasn't it?'

Martin waved this away with his hand, slightly queasy by the thought of rape, especially having just spent nearly a full half-hour in a cage of savage men. 'I've got a girl who takes care of those needs.'

She gasped. 'You been paying for sex? Seeing prostitutes? Martin, that's what Ted Bundy did!'

Having read The Stranger Beside Me five times, Martin was certain her statement was untrue, but he could not find it in himself to burst her bubble, so he said, 'Yes, I'm just like Ted Bundy.'

'Where?' she asked. 'Do you go into Atlanta? Do you make them do nasty things?'

Martin shrugged again, hoping she couldn't see how red-faced he was becoming. 'There's a lady – name'a Glitter. I use her to satiate my needs.'

'To get your anger out, right?' She took a few steps toward him. 'You're a really angry man, ain't you, Pasty?'

'I've got a temper.'

'I heard about you stomping on that briefcase,' she said. 'Is that what you used to kill her?'

He shrugged for maybe the sixtieth time. Was it just him, or was Unique standing closer? He could have reached out and touched her. So he did.

'Oh, baby,' she breathed, as if his touch brought a tingle to her skin. 'Do it again.'

He touched her bare arm, his creamy fingers a stark contrast to her black coffee. Suddenly, both her hands clamped around his head. She yanked him off the desk and crammed his face into her voluminous breasts. Martin couldn't breathe. His feet slid on the tiled floor as he tried to back away from her.

'Come'ere,' she grunted, her long, red fingernails scraping against his belly as she yanked down his pants. Martin didn't plunge so much as fall into her. She gripped his ass cheeks so hard between her fists that he felt like his butt was being molded into a handle. She certainly used it that way, pushing, pulling, pushing, pulling so that Martin was jackhammering in and out.

He couldn't stop her, and after a few hundred thrusts, he didn't want to stop her. His knees started to go weak. 'Oh-oh-oh!'

'Say it, baby!' she yelled back. 'Say my name!'

'You-knee-kay! You-nee-kay!'

'Say it, Doughboy! Say it louder!'

'You! Nee! Kay! You! Nee! Kay!'

'That's it!' she cried. 'Come on, baby! Fuck Unique! Fuck that baby!' She tugged and yanked and slammed him against her. Martin held on to her shoulders as she jerked his body back and forth.

'Oh! Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!' he cried.

'No, you don't!' she warned him, her hands stopping the motion.

It was too late. He came in torrents, great mighty plumes that would rival Old Faithful in pounds per square inch. His body shook with manly release, his muscles tensing as wave after wave shot through him.

'Nuh-uh,' Unique mumbled. 'No way you're finishing without me, Pillsbury.'

Her hand gripped the back of his head again, pushing his face down between her legs and into the cavernous cleavage of her cleft. Unique was stronger than she looked. Her fingernails dug into the back of his head, pressing Martin's nose against her wetness. He struggled to pull back even as she forced him closer. She started to grind against his face, his nose sliding up and down. Martin fought the urge to sneeze, to choke, to scream for air. He started to hyperventilate again, his brain spinning in his head, and still she pressed his face into her mound like an orange in a juicer, then like cheese in a grater. She was working on pork in a meat grinder when he started to see stars, and not the good kind. His eyelids flickered. Just before he passed out, she finished, or at least he thought she did. Either way, Unique pushed him away from her like he was a dog trying to eat off her plate. Martin fell back, his hands slipping on the tiled floor. His face was so wet that he must have been gleaming. She looked down at him with renewed disgust.

'You ain't all that,' she noted, tugging up her underwear. Her stomach rolled over the top like a muffin over its paper wrapper.

'I was-'

'Shut up, Fool.' She reached into her purse, checking something. 'All right, then,' she mumbled.

Martin had managed to stand but he was so dizzy that he didn't trust himself to reach down and pull up his pants. He put his hand on the desk to steady himself. He should do the gentlemanly thing now, like offer to take her to dinner or maybe suggest a drink. 'Unique, perhaps I could-'

'Pull up your pants, Fool. That weenie of yours ain't nothin' to look at.'

'Oh, sorry.' Martin scrambled to do as he was told.

'Carry that box out to my car,' she ordered. 'And stop looking at me like that. Just 'cause you got a taste of the honey don't mean you can keep buzzing the hive.'

Martin's Unique Problem, or An's Mary Ever-After

An blew her nose with a tissue even as tears streamed down her face. She should have known better than to start watching The House of Mirth while she was on her period. Or maybe An was just sensitive in general. For the life of her, she could not get Martin Reed out of her mind. The way he had compared her to Tempe Brennan… the way he had vomited when he'd seen the crime-scene photos (An had always had a soft spot for men with weak stomachs. Her father had suffered from ulcers his entire life). And then there was that look he gave her when she released him from the holding cells – part confused child, part sadistic monster. Would she ever know the real Martin?