“Hey, look,” Randolph said, “let me get your second G and T, okay? I’m not, you know, trying anything funny.”
“Thanks but no thanks, Avery.” She’d swiveled her body toward him slightly and was touching his arm. “I better get going. Inventory tomorrow, so I’ve got to be in early.”
The young widow got off the stool and strolled out of the landlocked Seaside Lounge.
“You get her number?” Carlson asked when he came back over to Randolph.
“Kind of,” the piano player answered, looking off, then readying the order of songs in his head for the next set.
A week later, Randolph was finishing off a loud and fairly incoherent sing-along version of “Volare” when Lori returned to the bar. She was wearing a modest skirt, a shirt and sweater top combo, and earrings that sparkled in the low artificial light. Randolph banged the keys with his heel à la Little Richard for the climax, everyone clapping and laughing. He stood, breathing heavy, pumping both fists in the air to more acclaim. A patron shouted, “Right on, baby,” above the din.
“Glad you came back,” he said to her. She lingered at the side of the piano, her purse atop the instrument. Normally he’d say something about that but he didn’t want to break the mood — his at least. People came by and gave him pats on the back and shoulders. The brandy snifter was brimming with bills tonight.
“Want to go somewhere, have a sandwich or something? I’m hungry.”
She leaned in closer to him. “Hungry for what?” Her smoke-colored eyes remained steady on him.
“There’s a little hole-in-the-wall place over on Cerritos,” he answered neutrally, but not breaking his gaze from hers. “They have great vegetarian burritos with fire-roasted peppers. Magnifico.”
“But I like meat.”
They grinned at each other like overheated teenagers as Randolph collected his tip money. Over in the corner at her customary table, Emily Bravera sipped her martini carefully as if testing the stuff for poison, watching the couple above the rim of her glass.
Randolph and the woman descended the outside stairs of the Seaside Lounge, which was lodged on the second floor of an aging ’80s strip mall. Down on the parking lot asphalt he became aware of a familiar odor and glanced up to see Carlson the bartender taking one of his Camel breaks. He leaned on the railing, the unfiltered cigarette smoldering in his blunt fingers. Lazily he looked at them. The two men then nodded briefly at each other. Randolph walked the woman to her eight-year-old bronze Camry that had a dark blue driver’s door. He gave her the directions to where they were going, standing near her and pointing off into the distance.
“See you there.” She gave him a peck on his cheek, her fingers holding onto his upper arm. Her hair was freshly washed and smelled of blueberries and mint.
At Agamotto’s Late-Nite Eatery and Coffee Emporium, they ate and talked. Lori McLaughlin was originally from Buffalo. She’d met her late husband Jeff, a local boy from Long Beach, when she’d come out to Southern California four years earlier, winding up with a job at a dog food manufacturer.
“That’s a trip,” Randolph remarked. “Like big vats where the meat and whatnot is all mixed together?”
“This place, Emerald Valley, is like the Escalade of dog food makers,” she said, biting into her barbequed meatloaf sandwich. She then pointed at her food. “Good cuts of meat like this, natural ingredients, grains — they make a high-end product for trendy pet stores in West L.A. and further down south here in Orange County like Newport Beach and Lake Forest.”
“But not for us peasants here in Los Al.” They both chuckled. “You have family back in Buffalo?” Randolph asked.
She sipped some of her beer and dabbed a napkin to her mouth. “Let’s just say there’s a reason I came out here, putting as much distance as I could between me and that socalled family.” Still holding the napkin, she squeezed his hand. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
A lanky youngster in a stained apron behind the counter gave the couple a grunt as they departed. He returned his attention to a news item on the small TV he watched, an image of Long Beach cops leaving a burglarized condo in Belmont Shores earlier that day.
Back in Randolph’s car, after she had him pull behind a closed liquor store, they made out. There was a bare bulb streaked with an oily substance over the metal back door of the establishment, and slivered fractions of the light filtered into the car’s interior and over their grasping forms. Randolph had his hand over her sweater, cupping one of her breasts as they kissed. He moved his thumb across her hardening nipple. She placed one of her hands on his zipper and rubbed.
“That feels good,” he murmured.
“This’ll feel even better.” She tongued his ear and unzipped him. Involuntarily, he sucked in his stomach. “I didn’t catch any hairs did I, Avery?”
“No. Lightheaded is all.”
“Mmmm.” She worked his shaft and then bent down. Randolph leaned back, eyes fluttering, noting that he needed to clean his headliner. Try as he might to fixate on prosaic matters to prolong the sensation, he soon wheezed, “Hey, careful, I’m... I’m about to come.”
She gave him a lingering lick along his penis, returning to the tip. “Uh-huh.” And then she let him climax in her mouth.
“Sweet mother of mercy!” Randolph exclaimed, grinning like a goon.
From her purse Lori McLaughlin produced a half pint of Jack Daniel’s, broke the seal, took a swig, and handed it across.
“Remember your motto,” she said as he had a taste. “Everything in moderation.”
“Most assuredly,” he retorted.
She took something else from her purse and presented it to him. “Because you’re not through, piano man. You have encores tonight.”
He took the offered orange tablet of Cialis. “I’m not that old, you know.”
“I know, darling.” McLaughlin had pulled up her skirt and, using her middle finger, was touching herself. He stared and said nothing. She continued this for several moments, then slipped off her light blue panties and pressed them to his face. He breathed in deep and popped the Cialis in his mouth, not bothering to wash it down with the booze.
Two hours later, at her three-and-a-half-room apartment not far from the joint-forces base, Randolph pulled on his cigar-smoking Woody Woodpecker boxers and went into the kitchenette in search of juice or cold water. He spotted a past-due notice from SoCal Edison on the counter.
On a book ledge crowded with knickknacks, he noticed a picture of a square-jawed, handsome lance corporal he took to be the late husband. He picked up the photo to see it better by the moonlight. The confident look of the soldier reminded him of his father, a decorated combat captain who died in Vietnam. A man he never met and only knew from Polaroids and letters his mother kept. He sighed inwardly, set the picture down, and traipsed to the refrigerator.
Inside he found an open can of Diet Pepsi. One hand on the door, the light from inside the refrigerator casting its glow about the compact kitchenette, Randolph glanced at a print of a leafy country lane hanging on the wall. It wasn’t anything special, more like the kind of mass-produced image demonstrating the virtues of the frame.
Guzzling the soda, looking sideways at the lane, cold air blowing against his lower legs, he suddenly felt a massive, pulsing erection.
“Magnifico,” he said, proudly stalking back into the bedroom, moving his hips to let his member swing from side to side. He hummed “Rocket Man” and sent up a prayer of thanks to the horny bastard who’d cooked up the orange tablet wonder.
In the morning Randolph stretched, scratched his side, and rubbed his whiskered face. In the other room he could hear Lori McLaughlin talking on the phone.