“How does my looking at Internet porn become a quality assurance issue?”
“She said it put the agency at risk for public relations.”
“Geez, talk about bullshit.”
“They met and she had me print out the history on your computer to show the committee.”
“Great…”
“Duff?”
“Yeah?”
“Why were you looking at porn for four straight hours in the office?”
“It had to do with Walanda and who killed her-but don’t tell anyone that. I don’t want them to know,” I said.
“You’d rather have them think you’re an Internet pervert?”
“For now, yeah.”
“Duff, you’re not a pervert, are you?”
“No, I’m not, Trina.”
“Good.” She sighed.
“Is that what brought you out here? You were worried that I was some sort of wack-job pervert?”
Trina’s chin started to tremble and a single tear ran down her face. She didn’t make a sound.
“That stuff was awful. Why would anyone like that?” It wasn’t a question for me, it was just a question she couldn’t answer.
Trina put her face in her hands and started to sob. I moved to the couch and sat next to her and held her. It was a bit awkward because I had the side with no cushion. She buried her face in my chest and let go. I let her cry.
It took awhile, but it subsided. She pulled back from me and kissed me on the cheek. I kissed her back lightly on the lips and when I did her lips parted ever so slightly. I felt her hand on my back as she pressed herself into me like she wanted to go through me. I held her head in my hands and kissed her hard.
Trina held on to me with one hand while she untucked her shirt with the other. She was in a hurry and there wasn’t much grace to the movement. She moved my hands under her shirt, first to her waist. Her skin was warm and smooth and she was lean with a hint of muscle like a woman should be.
Trina pawed at my shirt from the back to try to pull it off my head, and when it got tangled around my head we slid off the couch and down to the floor. She pulled off her shirt and undid her bra with an economy of motion. She rolled over so that she was on top of me and we were both naked from the waist up. This time there wasn’t the playfulness there was in the office, this time it was intense.
Trina ground into me as she sat up on me, and she seemed to be almost in another world. She was with me, very much with me, but at the same time she was focused on herself. She slid off me and undid my jeans and pulled them and my underwear off with a strong tug. Trina stood and reached to pull the zipper down on each of her boots before she kicked them off. There was no strip play to this, this was a woman with purpose. She undid the snap on her faded jeans and did that same little wiggle to get out of her slightly too-tight pants that she did that night in the office. Trina climbed on top of me and let out a half sigh, half whimper. She pulled her hair back with both hands and tilted her head to one side as her face contorted with intensity. She had found her rhythm and was riding it.
Trina’s pace picked up along with her breathing, which became shorter and more labored. I had entered my own world of intensity and was completely in the moment when Trina screamed.
“Ahhhhh! What the hell is that?” Trina screamed while abruptly bucking off me in a way that bent and twisted me and turned pleasure into pain in a hurry.
Shocked out of my blissful carnal state, I sat up quickly to see Al lapping away at the soft white skin of Trina’s ass.
“Stop that, stop it, I said.” Trina pushed Al’s nose away from her butt and Al looked at me with an expression of confusion.
“C’mon, Al, geez,” I said.
“Make him go away,” Trina said. In a matter of seconds we had passed through a world of intense bliss into a world of unending awkwardness.
“Al, go-C’mon, Al, go.” Al looked at me, then looked at Trina, and then back at me like he didn’t get why he wasn’t invited. “Sorry, Trina-it’s not that easy,” I said.
I got up and walked Al to the bedroom while Trina sat with her arms around her knees covering up. Once I got back to the living room Trina looked up at me from the floor.
“I’m sorry,” I said. It was all I could think of.
“I can honestly say that that has never happened to me before.”
“You should be flattered. Clearly, Al likes you.”
Trina went to punch me and when she did I grabbed her and pulled her on top of me as she giggled and play-acted resistance.
“Now, where were we before the dog licked you on the ass?”
Trina and I got dressed and I walked her to her car. It was that awkward moment after, and we found ourselves making small talk. I kissed her goodbye and she smiled at me. When she started up her car, I felt her eyes on me as she pulled out of the driveway. She smiled and reluctantly broke off the contact almost nervously and headed out Route 9R.
As far as getting my mind off things, it worked, but only for a little while. Pretty soon I was back to pacing and thinking of everything. From what Trina said, it sounded like Claudia was circling her troops to get me in a pretty tight corner. The only way out now was to somehow find out about this Webster bullshit. The phone rang again and it was Jerry Number Two.
“Duff, I got something you should see,” he said.
“What is it?” I said.
“I think we better do this in person.”
“Jer, you’re scaring me.”
“Maybe we should be scared.”
“I’ll be right over,” I said.
I got directions to Jerry’s place and headed over. My mind was racing and I was trying to slow my thoughts and, I guess, my fears down a bit. Elvis was doing “It Hurts Me,” the one from the Comeback Special, not the studio one. It was the type of song that calmed me down and helped me focus.
Jerry lived in a basement apartment in the college ghetto part of town, which was kind of puzzling considering what he told me about his wealth. The neighborhood was filled with two-family homes that were rented to college kids who promptly littered their front lawns with beer cans, pizza boxes, and empty Doritos bags. Many of the houses were once the old homes of Crawford’s working class who took great pride in their appearance. Now, these homes were either bought up by real estate investors or handed down to sons and daughters whose only goals were to make money. You can charge each kid seven hundred dollars a month, put five of them in each apartment, and they never bother you about fixing anything as long as they can have their weekly keggers. Once nice neighborhoods become ugly, any property owner who does care about their house finds the fastest way possible to move to the suburbs. Of course, there were the college ghetto perks too. Down the corner from Jerry’s place there were two ultra-cool coffee shops, a place to get a tan and your nails done, and three places to buy used CDs.
There was one door to his place and it was at the end of a five-step cement stairwell. The building was a hundred-year-old five-story apartment building with about ten apartments. Jerry hollered for me to come in, and I did.
His living room consisted of a futon couch, a futon chair, and one of those big circular rattan chairs with the pillow in the center. The place was filled with big plants, hanging in front of the basement windows and standing on either side of every piece of furniture. As I looked around, it dawned on me that I was standing in the middle of a bumper crop of marijuana. Jerry called to me from another room and I followed the sound of his voice.
Jerry’s office looked like something you’d see in the Batcave. There were four computer monitors going, there was a stack of black metallic boxes with lots of wires and blinking lights, and the room hummed from the sound of all the fans within the computer machinery. I had no idea what all the stuff was, but I knew it wasn’t cheap and it
