Page 14 of Dick

FOUR

Dick

WE sat at a table in the rear of the restaurant. Wearing her new sleeveless black dress, Jess looked like she stepped right out of an ad in a women’s magazine. I couldn’t decide if her brown hair had blonde highlights or if her blonde hair had brown highlights. It seemed like a perfect 50/50 mixture of both. Her brown eyes weren’t dark like most that I’d seen, they were more of a translucent color.

Almost a burnt orange.

She talked fast and used her hands to gesture a lot, which made her a very entertaining person to listen to – and to watch. It was easy to get lost in just watching her be herself. The day we met in the alley I planned to fuck her and forget her, but now that I had spent the majority of the night with her, I was enjoying her company more than anyone else I had spent time with since I got out of prison. I still wanted to fuck her, but forgetting her was something I was afraid might not happen.

Ever.

As much as I knew I may never forget her, allowing her to be in my life on a regular basis wasn’t an option. For me, a woman was a risk, a huge risk. And I wasn’t in the risk taking business.

I was a criminal and an asshole.

And I was good at being both.

She lowered her wine glass and cocked her head slightly. “So what is it that do you do exactly?”

We had finished eating, and I wanted to talk about sex, outsmarting the law, or the arrival of my new leopard, but not what I did for money. I decided to play along. Sort of. “The truth or a lie?”

She took another sip of wine. “Truth.”

I didn’t tell anyone the truth. “Entrepreneur,” I said, stretching the truth to its outer limits.

In my thirty years on earth, I’d fucked more women than Wilt Chamberlain, been to juvenile detention twice, prison once, and arrested more times than I could count. My current occupation – by definition – was a combination of a criminal and a vigilante of sorts, but I liked to call myself an entrepreneur.

It just sounded better.

She slid her glass of wine to the side. “Bullshit.”

It was bullshit, but I couldn’t really tell her the truth. Admitting the truth to anyone about what I did would be a foolish move on my part.

Very foolish.

“Why do you say it’s bullshit? I’m an entrepreneur.”

“You threatened to kill that guy in the alley. You said you were going to burn down his house and sell his wife to the drug cartel. Normal people don’t say stuff like that.”

I couldn’t believe she caught all of that while she was sitting behind me in her car. Either she had hypersensitive hearing, or I talked too damned loud.

“I’m not normal people. I’m uhhm. I’m what you’d call…”

I struggled with what to say. I wasn’t a normal person, I didn’t act like a normal person, and I couldn’t claim to be a normal person. While I attempted to formulate a variation of the truth – or a really well thought out lie – she leaned forward and pried her way into my line of sight.

“A criminal,” she said.

“Whoa. What the fuck? Why would you say that?”

“In the alley. You had a gun.”

Perceptive little bitch.

“So.”

“It’s simple mathematics,” she said. “One, you carried a gun. And it was shoved in your pants. Two, you threatened that guy’s life. And three, you told him if he didn’t pay you, you’d sell his wife to the cartel.”

She relaxed into her seat as if she’d made her point. As she reached for her wine, she raised her index finger and blurted out yet another reason. “And four, you drive a Mercedes.”