Hot Fudge (A Loretta Kovacs thriller) Page 9

  “Who’s your new playmate?”

  “Who? Loretta?”

  “Is that her name?” The woman’s voice oozed with contempt. “Don’t be that way, Sunny. She’s a nice person.”

  “Really.”

  Loretta gazed at herself in the mirror, still fixing the wig. So this is Dragon’s mistress, she thought. Loretta wondered why she was able to just walk into Barry’s office. Probably for the same reason she could “meditate” upstairs where the bedrooms were in his house.

  “So what’s the deal, Dorie? And don’t lie.”

  “Sun-ny!” Dorie whined. “Loretta is someone I knew back in New Jersey. She’s an old friend.”

  Loretta raised her eyebrows. There weren’t many ex-cons who referred to their wardens as old friends, but that was Dorie.

  Sunny didn’t respond, but as the silence grew, Loretta became concerned. What was going on out there? she wondered. Were they staring each other down, getting ready for a catfight? Dorie hadn’t been much of a fighter in prison, and this Sunny sounded like a nasty piece of business. It was her quiet control that concerned Loretta. In her experience the shouters were almost always more talk than action. Mostly they just wanted to vent. It was the calm ones like Sunny who did the most damage because they managed to carry out their intentions.

  Loretta stopped fussing with the wig and opened the bathroom door.

  “If I ever catch you with someone else,” Sunny was saying, “I’ll cut your—”

  “Well, that’s better.” Loretta said, putting on a pleasant face as if she hadn’t heard a word of what had been going on. But then she got a gander of Sunny. Her first thought was S&M Dragon Lady.

  Sunny was Asian American with pretty but hard features. Her straight jet-black hair was chopped at the neck, and she wore heavy eyeliner and dark red lipstick. She was a little on the heavy side, but obviously that was from lifting weights. The woman was buff and built with unusually broad shoulders, muscular arms, and powerful thighs. She was wearing a black leather halter, black leather shorts, and black lace-up lumberjack boots. There were big ornate rings on all her fingers, thumbs included. Her nails were moderately long and painted high-gloss violet. Both thumbnails, however, were so long they curlicued back toward her hands.

  “Oh, Loretta,” Dorie said. “This is Sunny Chu.” If Dorie was scared or nervous, she wasn’t showing it. She was one hundred percent laid-back California girl.

  “Nice to meet you,” Loretta said, extending her hand.

  Sunny didn’t say a word. She didn’t shake Loretta’s hand or even look at it. She just stared into Loretta’s eyes, beaming hostility directly into her. Nevertheless Loretta kept smiling, determined not to let Sunny creep her out—even though she was doing a pretty good job so far.

  So what’s her problem? Loretta wondered.

  What ‘s her problem? Sunny thought as she stared this Loretta woman in the eye. You think you’re better than me—that’s the problem. You think I’m dirt. I can feel what you’re thinking.

  “Come on, Sunny,” Dorie said. “Don’t be that way.” Dorie tipped her head forward and let her floppy blond hair envelop her face. She peeked through the blond tunnel and melted Sunny right down. Dorie knew how to do that. There was just something about her that Sunny couldn’t resist.

  Sunny turned away and stared out the window at the parking lot that went on forever. She loved Dorie, but she didn’t have a clue as to what Dorie thought of her. Sure, Dorie was friendly and accommodating, but Sunny wanted more. Barry had promised her that he would get Dorie to join them in a threesome, but so far it hadn’t happened, and she was getting tired of whipping that big tub of lard by herself. He was taking advantage of her now, taking more liberties with her than she’d ever allowed a client to take. But all Sunny wanted was Dorie—Dorie alone—and Sunny felt that she needed Barry’s involvement to convince Dorie that it would be okay. Of course, nobody ever really understood what Sunny wanted. They all had expectations and assumptions about her, but they had no freaking idea what it was like to be a butch bisexual Chinese American yellow witch-dominatrix. They just didn’t understand.

  Her family certainly didn’t understand her—not her relatives here or the ones in Hong Kong. Her sissy-boy clients didn’t offer much understanding either. They were just a bunch of needy little boys who wanted spankings from Mommy, but who never dreamed that Mommy needed a little something now and then, too. Have you hugged your dominatrix today? Not likely. The people at the gym avoided her; wouldn’t even use the free weights or the Stairmaster after she was through with them, as if she’d cast a spell on the equipment, which she wouldn’t mind doing except she wasn’t up to that yet in her witch training. The pinheads in her wu shu classes were just as bad, and she had no way of knowing what her conveniently inscrutable master thought of her. All the straight people she knew were afraid of her, and her lesbian friends didn’t completely trust her because she was bi. Even her ancestors in the afterlife dissed her when they spoke to her. They sounded just like her Hong Kong grandparents, very disapproving. They didn’t like the witchcraft she practiced and said that she was doing it all wrong, that a girl shouldn’t meddle in such things. They kept telling her to stop fooling around and learn to cook so she could find a man and get married. As if.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Sunny spotted Dorie standing close to Loretta, straightening out that cheap wig she was wearing. Blind jealousy started to rise in Sunny’s chest, stoked by the sight of Dorie fluffing Loretta’s bangs. It burned her shoulders and scalded her abs until the heat finally reached her face. It felt as if she were standing too close to an open fire. But for Sunny this felt good. She never backed away from things that were painful. She savored her jealousy, consumed it, turned it into chi—inner energy—then she let it electrify her. Emotions like jealousy stoked her inner furnace and increased her power.

  What’s bad is good, what’s good is bad, she thought. Yin yang, yang yin, as the ancestors always say. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

  Sunny focused on Loretta’s big butt. Sunny hated flab. It was evil, she thought. Unusable evil. She wished she had Dragon with her so that she could make him rip a big hunk out of Loretta’s butt. Dragon would do it for her. Dragon was loyal. Dragon loved her, and Dragon was the only one who did. She wished Dorie would love her like that.

  She smiled wistfully as she remembered Dragon as a pup. He was so cute and wrinkly. One of her clients—a man who was into enforced feminization—bred Dragon specially for her. He owned a small vineyard in Marin County and bred rottweilers as a hobby. He crossed one of his best bitches with a male shar-pei and gave her the pick of the litter. He’d actually brought all the puppies to her dungeon, so she could choose. There were seven of them, and they were all adorable, but she knew right away that Dragon was the one when he started to teethe on the handle of her bullwhip. She cradled him like a baby and scratched his belly, but he kept squirming and turning his head to sniff her leather bustier. Dragon still loved the scent of leather.

  She closed her eyes and imagined Dragon running through an open field of wildflowers. Thorns and burrs and brambles would get caught in his coat, and she would pluck them out one by one on the deck of a big house with a view of the ocean, pricking herself repeatedly until her fingers bled. It would be heaven. Her dream was to have lots of land and a great view and a fully equipped dungeon in the country, but she wasn’t so sure she’d ever have that. Agnes and Thaddeus were turning into a couple of butt-wipes. They talked big, but that’s all they did, just talk. She couldn’t depend on them. She was sorry she’d ever invested her hopes in those two.

  But Dorie was another story. Sunny looked at her sideways through half-closed lids. Dorie was sitting on the green leather sofa next to Loretta, the two of them chatting away. Sunny would love to live in that big house in the country with Dorie. Dragon liked Dorie. (He didn’t care much for Thaddeus, and he totally ignored Agnes.) And Barry would support Dorie financially, even if she left him. The man was a
doormat when it came to women. Sunny knew that firsthand. She could give him an ultimatum—if he wanted to keep seeing her in the dungeon, he’d have to help pay for the house. And he’d do it, too, because he couldn’t live without her approval. And even on the off chance that he could work up the gumption to find another dom, Sunny had secretly taped videos of him being trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Wouldn’t be too good for sales if Arnie and Barry’s fans found out that Barry was a perv. Whipped cream would take on a whole new meaning for them.

  Sunny allowed herself a self-satisfied smirk. She was glad that she had made extra copies of those videos. Arnie had originally commissioned her to make them, so that he could hold them over Barry, but she was no fool. In fact she had videos of both of them in compromising positions. Except that Arnie—well, Arnie was Arnie. Nothing bothered him, and he had nothing to be ashamed of. His banana split could wipe out the competition in a dead heat. That man could go far in porn if he wanted to. He could go far in anything if he wanted to. Like Dragon, he was born in the year of the dragon, which made him powerful, a leader, someone to be feared and admired. People like Arnie can make magic, but they should be kept close and cherished like rubies. And they should never be messed with.

  A few weeks ago she had thrown the I Ching for him. They were at his house, in the living room under the skylight. He’d wanted to know how he was doing in the luck department. He’d said he’d been feeling itchy lately, thought it might be time for a big change. He wanted to know if this would be wise.

  She was straddling him, both of them naked, using three quarters on his bare chest, throwing them down to get the hexagrams. All heads were yin. All tails yang. A tail and two heads were yin. A head and two tails yang. She threw the coins six times—yin, yin, yang, yang, yang, yang, which according to the I Ching was the thirty-third hexagram, tun, retreating. She then picked out his primary trigram, which was heaven over mountain. The signs, she told him, were not auspicious.

  “Heaven is about to confront mountain, a mounting force,” she’d told him. “This force will likely increase in power, posing an undeniable threat. Be wary of people whose character and virtue remain a mystery to you. Strangers should be avoided, for they may be the agents of the mounting force.”

  It wasn’t what he’d wanted to hear. Immediately he became sulky. He glared up at the skylight as if he were mad at heaven for wimping out to mountain. His banana split melted.

  He said just one thing for the rest of the afternoon, and he’d muttered it to himself: “The time has come.” Later he hummed “I Am the Walrus.”

  But now, looking across the room at Loretta, Sunny couldn’t help but wonder if this was the stranger Arnie had to avoid.

  Think about it. Loretta just arrived from the East Coast. Her character is unknown, and who knows if she has any virtues. And on top of that she’s pretty big, must weigh close to two hundred pounds. Mountain. She’s the mountain!

  “Sunny,” Dorie called over to her, “Loretta and I are going into town for lunch. You wanna come?”

  Sunny stared at Dorie, ignoring her question. She slowly shifted her gaze and let her stare bore into Loretta. “Mountain is strong,” she said, “but heaven has lightning. Life is uncertain. Fortune is a bucket. It can hold anything. Even snakes. Beware, Mountain. You can be crumbled.”

  Dorie squinted at her. “Does that mean you don’t want to come?”

  Loretta stared back without blinking, her face serious. Sunny grinned and sauntered toward the door, swinging her black leather hips like weapons. “Have a nice lunch,” she said.

  12

  “Where you going?” Vissa said.

  Marvelli was already halfway out of the car. They were still in the parking lot at the Arnie and Barry’s factory. He had to get away from her before he did something stupid.

  Vissa put the seatback up straight and adjusted her tube top. “What’s wrong? Are you gonna be sick?”

  “No, no. I’m fine,” he said. He was standing on the pavement, bending down and peering in through the open door.

  “But what about your headache?” she asked.

  “It’s gone.”

  “So fast?”

  “Yup.”

  He knew he was going to have a much bigger headache if he stuck around her.

  She took off her sunglasses and squinted at him in puzzlement, wrinkling her nose in the process. Marvelli zeroed in on her nose and froze. He wished to God she wouldn’t do that. He was tempted to get back in the car and say to hell with it, go for the gold, suffer the consequences later. Every muscle and gland in his body—particularly Mr. Man in his pants—was telling him to get in. Only his conscience was saying go away, but that was a faint voice yelling from down the end of a very long corridor, and that corridor was getting longer and the voice fainter and fainter.

  “Marvelli?” she said softly. “Don’t go. I’m worried about you.”

  He started to melt. She was asking him not to go. She was asking him. How many times does that ever happen, the woman asking the man? His foot automatically lifted off the ground and went back into the car.

  “I … I …” he said, but his mind went blank. He’d thought of an excuse for getting out of the car so abruptly, but he’d already forgotten it.

  “Let’s go back to the motel,” she said. “Come on.”

  Marvelli’s mouth wasn’t working; he couldn’t get any words out. At this very moment Vissa was beyond sweet. She was … she was what he wanted. Badly.

  But the faint voice was still struggling to be heard, shouting from down that long hallway. Short-term goals, the voice was yelling. No short-term goals. Think long-term.

  Those words doused him like an ice-water shower. Short-term goals, he’d always thought, were the big problem with men and women. Guys always settle for short-term goals, which is a big mistake. Guys use tactics, but they rarely have a strategy. Basically if a guy thinks he can get what he wants, he goes for it. In Marvelli’s current situation, Vissa was the short-term goal while Loretta was the long-term goal. Hands down, Loretta was the better bet for him, but if he went for the short-term goal, he would most likely screw up his chances of achieving the long-term goal, which was what he really wanted. And that’s what the little voice down the hallway was telling him. He put his foot back on the ground.

  “Marvelli,” Vissa whined. She was leaning across the console, her elbow on the driver’s seat, trying to get to him. “Please, Marvelli.”

  But he knew what he had to do even though Mr. Man in his pants was screaming at him, telling him not to be stupid, that Loretta would never find out. Marvelli moved farther away from the car, getting way out of Vissa’s reach, telling himself over and over again that he had to stay away from her even though he wasn’t totally convinced why. The sperm had shot up to his head, he told himself. The fluids in his brain were too cloudy to allow him to think straight.

  “Where you going?” she called to him.

  “Back inside,” he said, pointing at the factory.

  “Why?”

  “I’m gonna apply for a job.”

  “What?”

  “If I get a job here, I’ll be able to get close to Arnie, find out if he’s really Krupnick.”

  “But you said you didn’t remember him that well.”

  “It’s all coming back to me.” Marvelli reached into his pocket and pulled out the keys to the rental car. “Here,” he said, tossing them through the open doorway. “I’ll call you later at the motel.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Depends if I get the job. Don’t worry. I’ll call you.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be okay.”

  Oh, please, he thought. Please, let me get a job and let me start today. Right this minute.

  He turned and started to walk across the parking lot. But when Vissa stopped objecting, he looked back over his shoulder, a little disappointed that she wasn’t insisting more. Part of him wanted to be seduced, hoping
that she had magical powers, like a siren, and when it happened, it would be totally beyond his control. But Vissa didn’t say another word. She was crawling over the console, getting into the driver’s seat. He felt a little disgruntled that she’d given up so easily. Maybe she didn’t really want him that badly. Anyway, it was better this way. I think, he thought.

  He wedged his way past the crowd of visitors waiting to take the plant tour and wove through the crowd of shoppers waiting to get into the gift shop, which was packed with people holding up the various tie-dyed Arnie and Barry’s T-shirts, trying to decide which design they wanted. The gift shop sold all kinds of junk with the Arnie and Barry’s logo on it—coffee cups, ice cream bowls, ice cream scoops, pins, scarves, sweatshirts, beach balls, towels, baby bibs, decals, bumper stickers. All of it was grossly overpriced, and Marvelli couldn’t believe people actually paid good money for this junk. He wasn’t one for souvenirs and tchotchkes. The T-shirts and sweatshirts took up an entire wall of cubbyholes, but he noticed that one style in particular was selling much better than any of the others. As he stood there, the clerks kept having to restock those shelves. And he didn’t even think the design was that attractive—a brown, red, and pale yellow tie-dye swirl pattern, sort of like a septic flush. But then he saw the words on the front—ARNIE AND BARRY’S ELMER FUDGE WHIRL, The logo was altered so that Barry was completely bald with a hunter’s cap perched on top of his head, and Arnie was wearing rabbit ears and buck teeth. Marvelli gave it a second look.

  Actually it’s kind of clever, he thought.

  He passed by the gift shop and headed for a hallway where there were several offices. At the first office he heard the rapid clicking of someone typing on a keyboard inside. He was about to go in and ask where he could apply for a job, but he stopped himself and reconsidered the idea. It was very unlikely that they’d take him on the spot—he’d have to put in an application. And all he really wanted was to get a closer look at Arnie—and put some distance between himself and Vissa. He didn’t need a job to do that. He spotted a sign at the very end of the hallway that said EMPLOYEES ONLY.