“What else?”
“I’m into older movies and music. I read a lot of books.”
“What kind of music?”
“Smart lyrics with guitars. Solos get me off. That takes away my punk credentials, but hey. I like stuff with a Southern bent or feel. Lucero, My Morning Jacket, DBT. The Hold Steady, Dinosaur Jr., Sonic Youth... guitar-heavy stuff. At home I’ll listen to reggae.”
“That means...”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t smoke marijuana,” said Charlotte.
“I won’t hold it against you.”
“It makes me sleepy.”
“We wouldn’t want that.”
“No, we wouldn’t,” said Charlotte.
Lucas studied the curve of her mouth as she poured him more wine. She poured a glass for herself.
“Why’d you leave me your phone number the other night?” said Lucas.
“I’m sure it’s not the first time it’s happened to you.”
“They didn’t look like you.”
“Stop.”
“You’re a knockout,” said Lucas.
“Thank you.”
“I mean it.”
“I liked what I saw in you, too,” said Charlotte. “Even in a white T-shirt and a pair of shorts, you left an impression. And when you walked in tonight...”
“What?”
She looked directly into his eyes. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”
“Huh,” said Lucas, clumsily. He felt himself blush.
“Not that I’m all about that. Handsome alone doesn’t close it for me. I went back to Boundary Road the next night and talked with the bartender. She said good things about you. So it wasn’t much of a risk on my part to meet you here.”
“Here we are.”
“Yes.” She reached over and laid her hand upon his, right on the bar. He felt a warm current.
“What now?”
“You like the wine?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got another bottle in my room.”
“You have a room here?”
“Uh-huh. Why don’t we go upstairs?”
Lucas finished the wine in his glass. His trousers were tight, and he could feel his heart in his chest. He reached for his wallet, but she said, “No.” She paid the bartender in cash. Tan line on her ring finger, and she wasn’t leaving a paper trail.
Charlotte Rivers was a bundle of dynamite in a dress. She was smart, accomplished, and funny. She was also married. For now, Lucas didn’t care.
“You ready?” said Charlotte, getting down off her chair.
He was already standing. He stepped aside and let her lead the way.
Her room was an elegant suite, tastefully decorated, and tomb-quiet, with a nearly soundless air-conditioning system keeping the space cool. The bed was a king dressed in custom linens and a down duvet, and at the foot of it sat a black velvet settee facing out. A bottle of the same Barolo they had drunk at the bar sat on a dresser.
“Why don’t you take care of that?” said Charlotte, nodding to the bottle.
Lucas uncorked it and poured wine into two short water glasses, while Charlotte went around the suite, lighting votive candles. When she was done she turned off the lamps and overhead lights and returned to him in the bedroom. The suite glowed in candlelight and the flame-light flickered on its walls.
“You brought your own candles,” said Lucas, incredulously, as he handed her a glass.
“The staff brought them up at my request,” she said. “My firm puts our visiting clients and dignitaries in the deluxe suites on the top floors. We spend a lot of money here, and I’m treated well. And they’re discreet.”
Lucas sipped his wine and put the glass on the dresser. Charlotte set hers down as well.
“You could have been up here with your candles all alone,” said Lucas.
“But I’m not alone.”
“What if I wasn’t what you expected?”
“You are,” said Charlotte. “Stop talking.”
They kissed. He touched her fingers and her hand. Her mouth fit his perfectly. He knew that it would.
Standing, they kissed for ten, fifteen minutes, more. Their tongues touched but just as often it was with crushed lips. They stayed fully dressed. This was enough for now.
Charlotte stepped out of her heels. He gathered her up in his arms, her breath warm on his face. She unbuttoned his shirt and he let her peel it off him and it fell to the floor. She ran her hands up his forearms and biceps and then put her hand under his wife beater and caressed his abs, driving her tongue deeply into his mouth. Both of them broke off and stepped back. They were sweating. Her hair had fallen about her face.
“Badass,” said Lucas, with admiration.
She turned and he unzipped her dress. He kissed her warm, damp neck as he undressed her, and she faced him then and unbuttoned his 501s. He stepped out of them and kicked them aside. He pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it to the carpet.
She was wearing a thong and a lacy black bra and she was more than he had imagined. He had on only his boxer briefs. She reached out and stroked him through the fabric. He unfastened her bra at the front. When she was free, her breasts, full with dark, raised nipples, barely dropped, and the sight of her took his breath away. Lucas and Charlotte stayed standing in an embrace and kissed, and he set her breasts up high on his chest, and she said his name, and they kissed there and against the wall, and on the bed, and lost the rest of their clothing. Two hours passed with them simply, passionately making love with their mouths and hearts. Nothing like this had ever happened to Lucas before.
Naked on the bed and so hard it ached, he tried to move between her thighs, but she stopped him.
“Why not?” said Lucas.
“Kiss me down there.”
She got up off the bed and went to the black velvet settee at its foot and sat upon it, and Lucas kneeled in front of her on the carpet. He used his mouth, thumb, and forefinger, and his face became wet with her. She climaxed quietly, and after she caught her breath in the hum of the room she looked down at him and said, “Now you.” Back on the bed, she took him in her mouth, tongued his balls and shaft, and artfully, the head of his cock, and he felt himself panting, and his rapid heart rate, and he said, “Charlotte,” and came like a cannonball in a long, hot surge.
Afterward they lay on the bed talking, laughing, drinking wine, and kissing. It wasn’t too long before he grew hard once again.
“Impressive,” said Charlotte, reaching out and touching him.
“It’s you,” said Lucas. “And I’m young.”
They made love for a long time, and finished each other the same way. It was after midnight when she said it was time to go.
“I’ll sleep here with you,” said Lucas.
“I can’t,” she said.
“Can we...”
“Yes,” said Charlotte. “We’ll do this again.”
He was still sweating when he got into his own bed at two in the morning, wide awake. The smell of her, the image of her hair down around her face, her beautiful breasts, her voice, they were still there with him in the room.
Lucas got dressed and left his apartment. He went north on foot, through the dark alleys of 16th Street Heights. He was troubled and exhilarated, both at once.
He thought that a walk in the night might clear his head.
Seven
Handy’s garage was located on a service road behind a strip center on the Cottage City side of Bladensburg Road, not far from the Anacostia River, which stretched up into Prince George’s County, Maryland. Lucas had ridden his bike along the river and paddled it many times, but this commercial section of fast-food, Chinese/steak-and-cheese, Laundromats, and check-cashing establishments was unfamiliar to him.
Lucas parked his Jeep in a small lot crowded with older vehicles, mostly GM products: Cutlasses, Caprice Classics, Regals, and Grand Nationals. The lot edged a set of open bay doors. Two men worked on cars in the bay. One was tall with gray hair. He was holding a crescent wrench and looking at the undercarriage of a cream-colored Deville that was up on lifts. The other man was heavyset with a moon-shaped face. He was gunning the lug nuts off a half-ton GMC truck that was the sister to the Chevy Silverado. It was a hot day and both wore long pants and long-sleeve shirts rolled back off the wrists, and they looked to be suffering in the heat. Lucas recalled his father’s words: “That’s why they call it work.”