“Stop!” a man shouted.
“There!” Mr. Jay motioned to her. On the left was a ramp that led down into a large dark underground parking garage. Dawn did not hesitate. The air was cold and wet on the ramp and her feet slipped on the damp asphalt, but she was nimble and took extra care. They scrambled through the darkness with fluorescent lights flickering overhead. Behind them echoed the sounds of pursuit.
Mr. Jay pointed to a red door. Dawn followed him to it, and ran through as he shoved it aside. They scrambled up some stairs turning round and round. The door opened below them, heavy footfalls pounded. The entertainers ran.
Dawn didn’t think. Her mind just chanted, “ Run, run, run!” Heart laboring she sprinted. As the stairs switched back on themselves, there were doors. Finally, Mr. Jay flung one wide and she followed. They were in a hallway. Thick carpet covered the floor.
“Hotel!” Mr. Jay had slowed to a jog. “Give me those.” He snatched off Dawn’s hat, and stuffed it in his pack, then motioned for her shoes. “Quickly.” He shoved the jingling shoes away. “That will help.” He looked up the hall. A smile burst across his face. “Perfect!”
Dawn followed him to a pair of steel doors. An elevator? Behind them the door to the stairs swung open with a bang. Mr. Jay swung his walking stick and stabbed the buttons on a steel panel between the doors. The bottom button lit up.
“Come on, now! Don’t make me a liar,” he said to the doors, biting his lip and flashing his eyes back the way they had come. “I just said you were perfect.”
Dawn panted, her legs were trembling, but adrenaline surged through her when she heard a voice call down the hall. “This way…”
“Don’t worry about them, Dawn.” Mr. Jay had noticed her eyes growing moist as she looked back the way they had come. “We simply need the elevator. Whatever our pursuers will do, they’ll do, if the elevator does not get to us in time. However, that is only a possible future. Be optimistic.” He smiled weakly.
Dawn could not pry her mind from the sound of heavy footfalls approaching. Then a quiet chime rang and the doors started sliding apart. Mr. Jay shoved her through and squeezed in before they finished opening. He pushed a button set in a steel panel. It had the number one on it. Then he started jabbing another button that said, “Close Door.”
Their pursuers sprinted along the hall toward them. She could feel the vibrations of their approach through her bare feet.
Then the doors ground shut. She heard another voice. “Stop!” There was a hard thud as something hit the closing door. Dawn grabbed Mr. Jay’s hand when she sensed elevator dropping.
A huge grin spread across her friend’s cheeks and his eyebrows arched.
Dawn squeaked when the elevator shuddered to a stop. Mr. Jay grabbed her hand. “Don’t worry so much.” He straightened his top hat. “We will leave in grand style.”
The doors opened. With half-closed eyes, Dawn saw an old couple standing there hand in hand. The man wore a pair of thick glasses, and the woman had a giant hat. Startled, they stepped back to let the strange pair out of the elevator.
Dawn held tight to her friend’s hand as they crossed a red-carpeted lobby. There was a desk clerk and a couple of old men reading newspapers by a fireplace. Mr. Jay led her down three short steps to the sidewalk. He took her to a taxi that waited at the curb.
“Six blocks west, please,” Mr. Jay said to the driver as the taxi pulled away from the curb. Dawn squeezed his hand until he looked down at her.
“That was exciting!” he whispered.
12 – Lots
Sister Cawood’s tongue snaked over the brown skin at the nape of the Mormon representative’s neck. The Mormon did not return the favor, opting instead to kiss the pale flesh between her breasts. Sister Juanita Powell was an attractive woman of pre-Change thirty years. Her long black hair, threaded through with silver fell in ringlets, perfectly framing intense brown eyes. The couple had become close friends fifty years into the Change when Karen had attended the San Sebesta Inter-faith Christian retreat near the rim of the New Mexican Crater. They’d become lovers three decades later when Powell was assigned to administrative duties in the Archangel Tower Mormon Offices. The affair was a close-kept secret-and the orgasms more intense because of it.
Powell was in love with Cawood so overlooked the nun’s interest in men. Cawood loved Powell, but lacked the courage to tell her the full extent of her interest. Powell was a lesbian. Cawood’s tastes had yet to be fully defined. There was no agreement between them, but Cawood knew from their late night talks that too much information would crush the Mormon. So she lied every time they met.
But she depended on Juanita’s insights, and found the Mormon’s beautiful body responsive to her every touch. Able’s visit and Cawood’s hangover left her useless for work-half an hour of staring at her coffee cup said as much. At ten she’d taken an elevator to the Mormon’s office to talk. Able had dredged up the past, and Cawood needed a distraction. But Juanita smiled impishly and started kissing her the moment she entered. A passionate exchange brought them back to the Mormon’s apartment and they had been making love for an hour. Cawood was distracted all right. The physical tastes and sensations pressed in on her. She dove so deep into her lust that she almost snarled when Juanita stopped her.
“Hey!” Juanita blurted, closing her thighs over the sister’s neck. “Let me catch my breath.”
Cawood looked up, her vision foggy; then she smiled. Straining, crawling upward, she pressed Juanita’s lips and their tongues met. They rolled over the bed, giggling in a pink embrace.
“You aren’t feeling guilty are you?” Juanita said, still sporting the traces of a Spanish accent. She rolled a fingertip around the sister’s hard and rubbery nipple.
“No. Never-anymore.” Cawood lied. “I’m sorry-I got caught up. You’re so beautiful.” Her hands slid over the Mormon’s full hips-dallied a second between her legs. A wave of passion rolled over them. “It’s Able, he came in with another crazy scheme.”
A hot emotion flitted behind Juanita’s eyes. “What now? He wants to put on an addition?” They both laughed. Building the Tower had consumed the lives of everyone involved. “A carport?”
“No,” she giggled. “Able loves the tower.” Cawood’s mind rolled over the notion. “So do I. It’s not that.” The sister remembered Able’s earnest face. She realized how important this was to him. How important their spiritual intimacy was. He trusted Cawood. “He’s just getting revved up again.” Juanita’s body went rigid. The Mormon’s hand clasped on Cawood’s wrist.
“Can’t he bother someone else?” She shook her head. “I like Able, don’t mistake me. I do. But always he goes to you.” She kissed Cawood again, her body softened. “What does he want now?”
“I can’t tell you.” Cawood sighed. She ran her hands over Juanita’s soft shoulders. “I want to. I do. But, he trusts me so much.” And he shouldn’t!
“Don’t you trust me?” Juanita’s eyes glimmered. “I won’t tell.” She patted the bed sheets, slid her hand over Cawood’s vulva. “You trust me with this.”
“I know, Juanita. I do.” Her breath caught, and she closed her eyes. This was what it was all about- relationships: the sharing of trust, of intimacy, giving and receiving access to the soul. But it was God’s. It was the Holy Mother’s. I’m so fucking bad. A desperate part of her mind searched her memory of Juanita’s apartment. Liquor, there had to be liquor. “Able won’t trust just anyone. And he trusts me.” Why not tell? Her mind snickered. The whole thing’s a joke!
“I like that about you.” Juanita’s warm spirit returned and they shared a kiss. “I guess he does too.”
Cawood remembered first meeting Able. She had been on a personal revival of sorts, after falling far from grace fifteen years after the Change. She had tried to blame the difficulties with her vow of chastity on the fact that the Change apparently halted her aging process, leaving her in the body of a young woman for far longer than any nun ever had before. Before long she stopped blaming anything at all, and dove into the erotic world of human sexuality. Vows and chastity were thrown to the wind, and she had cavorted with any interested man or woman.
