Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (22 page)

“Yeah, I guess,” I croak.

“
Błażej, thank— We appreciate.” In other
words,
We
really do need the dough.

“
OK, Mamah, I just wanted to give you the
good news. Tell
dziadzia
I say
hello.”

She stays silent.

“
Mamah?”

“
Yes, yes, I do it.”

“
Mamah, everything OK?”

“
Y—yes, of course!” She’s fooling no
one.

“
Mamah,
don’t
lie to me! I’m thousands of miles away. I
need
to know if something’s wrong or
else I’ll be thinking about it all day and it’ll affect
my
work
.” I emphasize that
because I know she listens when I talk about “my work.”

“
Is just...sweetie...
dziadzia
is not feeling so good. The lung infection
is back.”

“
Can’t he take antibiotics or
something?”

“
Yes...yes...we give him that.”

“
O—OK, Mamah. I’m sure it’ll get better.
I’m wiring the money right now.”

“
OK, Błażej. Congrat— Congratulations
again. Mamah must go. Bye!”

She puts the phone off. And I could swear
that was a sob I heard just before she clicked off.

I wire a grand instead.

You’ll note I never said shit to Mamah
about being back in touch with Xavier again, the brother of my best
friend who I took drugs with and who ODed a year ago?

I’m sur
e you can figure out why that is.

Declan Cox

“
Mother
hell
!” Trev stares out at the city across the East River. The
luxury condo we’re in sports large windows, a high ceiling, plush
rug. Not to mention the top-grade furniture we’ve been moving into
the place all morning. As his eyes look around the apartment, it’s
like he’s rolling. “Mother...
fuck
!
Deck. This isn’t Brooklyn. I mean, you pulled a Marty McFly up on
me in here, didn’t you?”

“
I wonder myself sometimes, bro. Now you
gonna help with this couch, or what?”

“
I’m almost scared to touch it. Somehow I
think the couch is worth more than my entire life
savings.”

“
You have no life savings.”

“
Thanks. Rub it in.”

We move the cream couch over against the
wall so it’ll catch the sun from the large terrace doors. “I don’t
know exactly where she wants it...so...just leave it here. That’s
the last of it. You’ve successfully moved your first apartment.
There’s always a job waiting for you here if you screw up your
college education.”

“
Har har, funny.” Trev looks at the mammoth
flatscreen. “Incredible. When we picked it up at the Lower East
Side, I figured they were moving
down
in the world by coming here.”

“
Yip, they’re moving up now.
Up
to Brooklyn.”

He laughs. “Send em over to my place after
this, then they’ll get a taste of what it’s really like to live in
Brooklyn.”

I fall on the couch, my arms burning from
all the lifting we’ve been doing. “Dunno, bro. You’ve seen what
Williamsburg looks like now. It’s like freaking yuppieville in
there now. Bushwick’s not far behind. Who’s to say East New York
won’t be next?”

He snorts an incredulous laugh. “Because
East New York’s predominantly
black
,
Deck.”

“
And?”

“
Black neighborhoods never get gentrified.
They need a place to put us.”

“
Har har back to you, dumbass.
Anyway, it’s the artists that
bring the market value up. Then the big condo men come in and kick
em all out like roaches. East New York doesn’t have no graphic
artists there for shit. Plenty of musicians, rappers, but not
enough
pre-yuppie
clout.”

“
And plenty of gangs.” He turns to me.
“Hey, do you always chill on the client’s furniture when you’re
done lifting it?”

I lift a tired head. “Just a little wiped
today.”

He smirks.

“
It’s not like that! Well...sort
of.”

“
She was hot, homes.”

“
Mrs. Watkins?”

He laughs again.
“Her, too. The Yuppie blonde for the Yuppie
condo.”

“
And don’t forget the Yuppie
husband.”

Trev’s bent over himself
laughing, and I’m doing the
same, when we hear the cough. We look up. Mrs. Yuppie Watkins is
leaning against the doorjamb in her cream pencil dress (which has
betrayed—more than once today—that she likes to go at it commando,
both top and bottom.) She’s sipping a drink from a straw, umbrella
and everything. If she wasn’t smirking, I’d be panicking. You don’t
talk about clients like that. No matter what you think of them.
But, well, having Trev around has brought out the worst in me
today. We’ve commented on everything from her ass-length straight
blonde hair to her athletic legs to, finally—and absolutely
guaranteed
to happen when you put two guys
together—whether her C-cup is truly
au naturel
or a masterpiece of man-made engineering (“Deck,
if it wasn’t natural, it would be a D-Cup. Why pay for it if you
don’t take it all the way?”) We’ve ogled her legs, discussed the
sexual performance of her lawyer husband (or, in our typical male
imaginations, his lack thereof), pondered whether or not she’d be
willing to cheat on him...

Yeah, uhm, OK, we’re guys, and I think you
get the point. Let’s move on...

I decide it’s time to grovel: “Er, Mrs.
Watkins, I’m sorr—”

Her smile goes wider, and she sucks her
drink down more loudly, making sure to openly flex her lips
outward. Still looking at the straw, mouth barely away from it, she
says, “Mr.
Cocks
...is it?”
She bounces off the doorjamb, catwalks over to me.

“
Yes, ma’am.”

She giggles. “Please, call me
Tatiana.”

I catch her
—very obviously—eyeing my pumped-up biceps,
especially the colorful one on my right.

“
You boys don’t need to worry about me.
This
yuppie
woman is
very happy with your”—she sucks the straw again, even though the
drink is nearly empty—“
services
. Now, what do I owe you?”

“
Fift—fifteen hundred, ma’am.”
So I changed the
price after I saw their Mercedes. Sue me. She never asked me for a
quote beforehand, just said she’d read “great things” about my
services on Yelp. And have you
seen
their TV?

She does the equivalent of a female
swagger on her way over to a cupboard,
then bends over...
slowly
...and lingers at a bottom drawer. I look away, because I’m
not gonna screw things up with Blaze in
any
way. I know I just met her, but I’m gonna give it
the full chance it deserves.

Trev, on the other hand, has broken out in
a sweat. And his eyes ain’t goin nowhere!

From the corner of my eye, I see her walk
back over to me. The way her tight pencil dress hugs her curves is
not helping my resolve. She holds out a wad of cash, “Here’s
seventeen hundred. Consider it a tip.” I almost tell her that I
overcharged her already as it is, but I swallow my tongue. Business
is Business.

“
Thanks, ma’am.”

With a glint in her eyes, she says, “May I
show you the terrace? Or”—she flicks a lascivious glance over at
Trev—“do you boys have somewhere else to
go
?”

I can almost hear Trev begging me to stay,
if only for the view. And I ain’t talkin’ about Manhattan. “Er,
sure, ma’am. But, we have another two moves to do today, so it’ll
have to be fast.”

“
Oh.” She sucks the straw again. The drink
is most definitely emptier than empty now. She puts it down on the
glass table and, while still looking at it, bent over just enough
for the double meaning to be clearly there, she says, “I can
do
fast
. No
problem.” She straightens up. I swear it looks like she actually
pumped her tits out an inch while doing it. Then, casually, easily,
her hand makes it over to my tatted bi!

I won’t BS you here. I’d love to
say,
Oh,
yeah, I’m such a grand guy that I gingerly take her hand off my arm
and politely tell her that my damsel is waiting for me to place a
coat on the puddle she’s about to walk over.
I’d love to say that shit. But of prime
importance in a tale is honesty. So this is what really
happens:

When her hand caresses my tatted bi, I
feel some primordial part of me jump her right
here on her
Wundaweve
Carpeting.
Where would we be without imagination?
I actually even feel myself
inch toward her, like my cock’s taken over all the blood from my
brain and stuck me in a momentary stupor.
Oh, wait, that’s precisely what’s
happened.

But, dazed as my
mind is, it hasn’t completely shut down. So,
instead, I shift a little left, and break contact smoothly with the
hand.

S
he looks at me “innocently” in the eyes, cocks her head
just slightly to the left. “Mr.
Cocks
, please, it’s
Tatiana
. Not
ma’am.
”

Yes, ma’am.

She
sashays past Trev—who I’m pretty sure will faint soon due
to a similar lack of cerebral blood-flow; only worse, because he
doesn’t have a gorgeous babe waiting for him at home like I do.
Tatiana opens up the glass-pane doors to her terrace. Trev’s quick
on her tail, hypnotized.

Before
joining them, I pull out my Motorola and DM Blaze on
Twitter, just to remind myself of her. And to remind myself of how
I felt last night with her. My hand on her moist center. Her gentle
quake under my body as she climaxed.

And holding her after...

Yeah, no contest
here
, I
think.
There’s something
...sparkly...
about that girl
. And this one—this Mrs. Watkins—well, she is what she
is...

DM
DJHeavenLeigh: Hey, sexy, thinking of
you. Got a crazy client this morning. Hope all’s good.

DM
DeclanCoxDWAT
: Thinking of u 2. All’s good. Sure. Had a crazy meeting.
Pack o’ wolves.

That worries me...

Outside, on Mrs. Pencil Skirt’s
wrap-around terrace, I find her
leaning against the wall, head tilted back while she laughs at
Trevor’s no-doubt extremely pinpointed jokes and stories. As she
waves her hand and displays more than necessary neck, her fingers
graze lightly over his shoulder.

Trev’s
a big boy. I mean...
big
.
The dude’s a monster in the muscle department. And her interest in
him is not even remotely disguised.

“
Can I get you boys a drink?”

Before I can decline, Trev says, “Sure.
What you got?”

“
Well, the apartment block offers room
service”—
what!?
—“so,
whatever you want.”

I clear my throat. “Uhm, soda for me. I’m
driving.”

She scowls, then, looking at Trev,
says:
“Surely you’re not
gonna get a
virgin
drink
like that. Are you?”

Trev ponders it a second. He looks over at
me and I know he can read my mind.
He says, “Actually, Mizz Watkins, we really do
need to get going.”

Wind rushes past my ears. Her eyes flick
to the view of Manhattan, her own hair a mad howl straight out of a
romantic Hollywood scene. “Well, fine. Mr. Cox—”

“
Declan, ma’am—uhm,
Tatiana
.”

“
Declan, thanks again for the great
service. I’ll certainly be giving your name to all my girlfriends.”
She grabs Trev’s wrist, leans in a little. “
And
yours, honey. I’ll be sure to be watching
that
cup
or
bowl
or whatever it is you call
it.”

“
If we make it there this year,” he
says.

“
Well, maybe I’ll see if we have it on DVR.
My husband’s not much of a sports fan, but he’s got a few things
recorded on there. And if you say the last game you won was in
December I doubt it would have been recorded over. It’s really a
pity you guys can’t stay for a drink. Maybe next
time...”

On our way out,
she grabs my wrist just after Trev’s out the door.
I turn, and before I know it her chest’s touching mine!
What the
fuck!?