Rules of the Game (54 page)

“Or during dinner.” She smiled, exposing her teeny teeth. I couldn't imagine a weirder partner in crime. I was actually starting to like her, which was a good thing, considering that I'd just slept with her.

The following evening, after Leslie and I finished another game of penguin, there was a light, rapid knocking on the door. I opened it to find a woman with long legs encased in tight jeans, a flat, exposed abdomen, and a half-shirt clinging to large natural breasts.

Her face, however, was etched in permanent frown lines, stamped with dark circles around the eyes, framed in an explosion of frantic black hair, and crowned by a halo of drama. This was Samantha.

The first words out of her mouth were: “I need to borrow your phone.”

Leslie's friend, Leslie's problem.

She took Leslie's phone, shut herself in the bathroom, and yelled at someone's answering machine as the bellhop arrived with three black bags. Samantha was moving in.

I left the room for the temporary refuge of the lobby and called Farah to warn her that my friends were going to be a little unusual. When I returned, Leslie was wearing a leopard-print dress with a plunging neckline and Samantha had changed into an imitation fur vest with nothing underneath.

When we walked through the lobby, a skinny bald guy sandwiched between two curvy giants dressed like eighties streetwalkers, every head turned. For a moment, I thought this was all a practical joke Justin was playing on me, but he's too broke to hire girls. Just to be safe, on the cab ride to the restaurant, I checked Leslie's ID to make sure she shared Justin's last name. Fortunately, her credentials checked out.

“I lost my credit card,” Samantha prattled. “Do you guys mind if I borrow money just for tonight?”

“You're on your own, kid,” I told her. I wasn't going to let her put me in the daddy role. If she wanted respect, she'd have to earn it.

Farah was waiting for us at the restaurant in a black strapless evening dress. She far outclassed my company.

“This is Leslie, the Tantra teacher I told you about,” I said.

Farah smiled and greeted her. Only a slight, involuntary furrow down the center of her forehead gave away her befuddlement as to how this pink-boobed leopard woman could possibly be a spiritual guru.

The maître d' led us to a table in the outdoor garden, where a movie was being projected onto the wall. Conveniently, the film was
Last Tango in Paris
.

To break the ice, I ordered a bottle of wine and performed a few illusions I'd recently learned, including one where I cause a ball of paper to rise off the table and float into the air.

“If he can send his energy to objects, imagine what he can do with parts of your body,” Leslie told Farah. She was a great wingman.

“That stuff scares me,” Samantha interjected. Every word out of her mouth was a plea for sympathy. “I need more wine. Can someone get the waiter over here? I think I'm getting a migraine.”

The meal was interminable. No matter what subject we discussed, Samantha managed to bring it back to her neuroses. If we were talking about the movie on the wall, she complained that her cable was out and the repairman wouldn't come over. If we were discussing sex, she complained that the guy she was dating hadn't called her all week. If we were exchanging stories about nights out in London, she went on a tirade against her brother because he's a travel agent and never gets her deals.

My head ached just listening to her. “Do you see a pattern?” I finally snapped. “Your repairman won't come over, your boyfriend doesn't call you, and your brother doesn't help you out. Maybe the problem isn't everybody else; maybe it's you.”

Her face scrunched, her eyes puffed, and she fell quiet for the remainder of the meal. I could tell that she was adding the comment to her archive of victim stories to tell for sympathy.

I'd just destroyed the night's foursome. And I was fine with that. It wasn't worth the headache. After dinner, I told Leslie and Samantha that I was going to a party with the Iranian princess. They seemed fine with that, and said they were going to a dance club.

However, between the magic tricks I'd performed, which led Farah to think I had actual shamanistic powers, and the company I kept, which led her to think I had a perverted sex life, she kept her guard up. When she dropped me
off at the hotel after the party, we made out tepidly in the car. She seemed to be accepting my kisses, rather than returning them.

I walked to the elevator, dejected. My foursome had turned into just me, alone, again. My uncle was right. When pigs become hogs, they get slaughtered.

When I stepped off the elevator, I saw Leslie, Samantha, and a third girl I didn't recognize smoking in the hallway and waiting to get in the room. I'd assumed they'd be out partying all night.

Their friend introduced herself as Dee. She was petite, with a quiet confidence and braided hair extensions that ran halfway down her body. Her skin seemed Latin American, her facial features Native American, her backside African American.

Inside the room, Dee pulled a water bottle out of her purse, took a sip, and handed it to Leslie. Leslie took a small swig, then handed it to me.

“GHB,” Samantha warned.

I passed it back to Leslie unsipped. I officially owed Samantha one.

Leslie fished into her overnight bag and produced a metallic green dress with an oval cutout running from just below the neck to the navel. “Hey, you have to try this on,” she said to Samantha. I admired Leslie's talents as an instigator.

Samantha emerged from the bathroom moments later, looking like a Christmas tree with a misshapen star. “This one's perfect for you, Dee,” Leslie said, pulling a white mesh minidress out of her bag.

Dee did not use the bathroom. She pulled off her jeans and tank top, revealing a body designed for the covers of muscle car magazines, and put on the dress.

“Mmm, you look good,” Leslie purred. She walked up to Dee, laid a hand on the center of her chest, and began making out with her.

I was in the presence of a professional.

Within minutes, Dee was spread-eagled on the bed with her dress hiked up and Leslie's face between her legs. I sat next to them in my dinner clothes, not on GHB, thinking, This is cool.

When I joined them, via the nearest available breast, Leslie looked up at me, chin wet, and grinned from ear to ear. She reminded me of a coyote eating carrion.

“It's too hot in here,” Samantha said suddenly. “I need some air.”

By air, she meant attention. “Come join us,” Leslie trilled, rising from the bed to bring Samantha into the mix.

“I want to clean the room a little first. You guys go on ahead. Don't mind me.” The room wasn't even messy.

“Maybe I'll join you guys later,” she added awkwardly, unconvincingly. “Looks like fun.”

Leslie returned to the bed and pulled my clothes off. She and Dee both went down on me.

“Do you think there's an ironing board anywhere?” Samantha asked.

This was becoming even stranger than a foursome.

“You know what you can do?” I suggested, once again ignoring my uncle's advice. “Grab my camera off the table and take some photos.”

Leslie and Dee didn't object; there probably wasn't much they'd object to. As the flashes went off, and the two of them earned their way into my shortlist of deathbed memories, I tried not to orgasm. A woman's sexual appetite, once unleashed, is much more voracious than a man's, and if I blew it now, I'd be stuck on the sidelines for the rest of the game.

“What button do you press to see the photos?”

I ignored her. This was my moment to shine.

“I'm bored,” Samantha moaned. “I'm going to take a bath.”

Leslie jumped up. “I'll help you.”

Samantha was doing this on purpose.

Ten minutes later, Leslie returned from the bathroom, rebuked, and asked me to take a shot.

I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around myself, and sat on the edge of the bath.

Samantha was sitting naked in shallow water, her legs bowed out like a bratty child's.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I'm okay. I like it here.”

I decided to push my luck. It is my nature to push my luck. I am a hog.

I slipped off the towel and joined her in the bath. As we talked, I massaged her arms and legs. She didn't stop me.

I circled my fingers around her nipples until they hardened, then ran my tongue across them. She didn't stop me.

I moved my hand up her leg, until it reached the apex, and traced my finger slowly down her opening. She stopped me.

“No,” she said, pushing my hand away. “Too much.”

I'd been so worked up from the activity in the bedroom that I'd neglected to turn her on enough. And that was fine. Two birds in the bed, I decided, are better than one in the bathtub. I'd have to share that aphorism with my uncle next time I saw him.

When I returned, Dee was going down on Leslie. I joined her, and eased my finger up to her G-spot. This was more like it.

Leslie moaned and arched her back. She shuddered to orgasm, then begged us to keep going. Dee and I switched positions, and Leslie quaked again. She begged for more. For what seemed like forty-five minutes, she kept us down there, giving her orgasm after orgasm. My jaw ached, my wrist hurt, I began thinking about how good a Caesar salad with huge seasoned croutons would taste. Leslie kept arching her back, making us work harder and harder for each orgasm. But, as greedy as she was, I didn't stop. I wanted to show my appreciation for what she'd arranged tonight.

“Wow, that bath felt so nice.” The fun-ruiner had returned. “Do you guys mind if I call room service? I'm hungry.”

“No,” I told her. The last thing we needed was room service busting in on the action.

“No, you don't mind or no, I shouldn't do it?”

“No, now would be a bad time.”

Leslie, somehow, managed to have another orgasm during all this.

“I'm just going to make some tea.”

I don't care.

I put on a condom, made sure it was unrolled to the very bottom, then entered Dee while she was going down on Leslie.

“Oh, here's the ironing board.”

She must be on crystal meth.

“Do you mind if I iron your shirt?”

I may be all about worse, but this was becoming a nightmare. It was like having sex with my mother in the room.

Eventually, both Samantha and Dee were satisfied and they fell asleep. Not even a thank-you.

“You can go to bed now,” I told Samantha. ‘You're safe.”

“That's okay,” she said, sitting in the desk chair. “I'm an insomniac.”

Definitely meth.

With my mind and heart still racing from the night's adventure, I had trouble falling asleep. Samantha, conscious of this, began reciting her life story—her father shooting himself in front of the family at a dinner party; her mother leaving her at an aunt's house and never coming back; her first love beating her throughout the ten years they dated.

No wonder she was always begging for help and attention: Everyone she loved had left her or abused her. And, decades later, she was still searching for the safety she'd never felt as a child. Thanks to the needy way she went about it, however, she ended up replaying her childhood rejections with every new person she met instead.

I actually began to feel bad for her. Then I fell asleep.

In the morning, I woke to the sensation of Dee biting my neck. We were the only ones in the bed. It felt kind of empty.

“Where's everyone else?”

“They're in the bathroom,” she whispered.

She reached around and stroked me. “Do you have another condom?” she asked.

I put one on. She rolled onto her side, with her back to me, and I entered her. When I began to moan, she whispered for me to be quiet, as if worried Leslie would hear us. I couldn't understand why this was an issue. Maybe she thought I was Leslie's man. Maybe we were breaking some unwritten law of the ménage àtrois. Or maybe she'd just forgotten to bring her dildo that morning.

An hour later, we packed our bags, left the room, and took the walk of shame through the busy hotel lobby. Samantha offered to drive me to the airport and, as the four of us waited for her car at the valet stand, she grabbed my hand.

“Your skin is so soft,” she said coquettishly. This was so out of her character that I didn't know how to respond.

Her car was not old and sleek like Leslie's. Just a beat-up white Malibu from the nineties. Its dented body, grinding brakes, neglected interior, and broken taillight conveyed nothing but hard living and bad luck.

After she pulled up to the terminal, Samantha applied lipstick, pulled an envelope out of her purse, and covered it with kisses. Then she handed it to me. I took a last look at the women in the car. I was actually going to miss them.