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In his bathroom, I went through his medicine cabinet. Xenazine, Zyprexa, Klonopin ... I’d never heard of those before. I needed to get him that Advil before he started wondering if I was taking a shit, and then a shower right afterward.
I emerged back with two Advil and some water. Charlie gulped everything down. He stayed silent for a while. I thought about helping him to a shower but then concluded he’d just be embarrassed if I offered. Best to ignore the stain between us. A stain, by the way, that must have been itchy and was starting to smell now.
“Is there anyone I can call?” I sat on a recliner opposite him.
He shook his head. “Nope. I have no one. How pathetic is that?”
“Stop with the self-pity, Charlie.” It was like looking at a mirror thirty years from now. I didn’t like what I was seeing.
“I don’t pity myself.” He smiled. “I deserve to be alone.”
Despite telling myself I didn’t give a shit, I did stay with Charlie for a couple of hours. I fixed him a bowl of cereal and some coffee, wrote down my number and stuck it on his fridge, then cleaned the place a little so he wouldn’t have to.
“Do you need anything else before I go?” I stood in the doorway. Truth was, I wanted to get back to Duffy as soon as I could and check on her. She liked the old man, and she’d seemed distraught to see him this way. It was grossly inconvenient that the wife I told myself was a shallow, money-grabbing stuck-up could feel so deeply for her old neighbor.
“No,” Charlie said. “You’ve already done more than I’ll deserve.”
“Jesus, Charles. Dramatic much? You didn’t kill my cat.”
I closed the door behind me and shook my head.
Asshole was too sentimental for his own good.
I checked in on Charlie in the days after the hallway incident. He seemed off, but not off enough that he was pissing his pants or forgetting where he lived. Still, he was irritable and pensive, which worried my ass. Was it time to step up and actually do something for someone else? The thought made me nauseous. At the same time, the temptation to offer him help had never been greater. Stupid fucking heart. It had been dormant for nearly forty years and all of a sudden decided to beat for all the strays in New York. Donating handsome amounts of money annually to charities and getting tax relief for it was so much more convenient. I wanted to get back to doing that.
Speaking of strays, I had another, hot issue on my hand—namely Duffy.
I ended up “hiring” my wife for three more days, a gesture of goodwill I had never previously made before. If Duffy suspected the post wasn’t real, she didn’t say anything. I paid her in cash, since she couldn’t technically work. And while it was laughable thatDiscoverywould ever fund me a two-grand-a-day assistant,shedidn’t know two grand was the kind of money my eightieth butler could wipe his ass with, if I wished to have one.
She clearly needed the money, and I was clearly so pussywhipped that I saw fit to start paying her for simply existing.
Duffy was actually a good employee, even though I had to pull tasks out of my ass to keep her busy.
Ever since that first time in her room, where we’d almost burned down the building, all I could do and/or think about was putting my penis in any hole in her body that was willing to accept me. We’d been going at it like rabbits. In the apartment, in abandoned prisons, in the rental car to and from those prisons. A small part of me wanted totake her places—restaurants, the movies, picnics, vacations—just so we could screw there, but that was treading too closely to real-relationship territory, and apparently, falling in bed with her hadn’t robbed me of all my gray matter.
Just 99 percent of it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
RIGGS
“How do I look?” Duffy marched out of her room, wrapped in one of her dresses. It killed me to see her hiding those curves in ruffled blouses and weird-ass frocks more fit for a runway. And I’m not talking a Victoria’s Secret runway. I’m talking the designer shit I used to see when I accidentally landed on the Fashion Channel in the middle of the night as a teenager while I was high, hoping to catch a nip slip. The kind of weird, asymmetrical, sharp-edged dresses that made you wonder how much pot the designer had been smoking prior to sending out their sketches.
Couldn’t she fill her closet with pencil skirts and edible thongs? What kind of gold digger was she?
A terrible one, obviously.
But she twirled in her tiny living room, looking hopeful, and I refused to kill her vibe.
“Yeah, the dress is very ...” I cleared my throat.“Dressy.”
I was slung on the couch, stroking my dick through my briefs. I was still crashing on the sofa, which worked well for both of us, because it made us remember there was a red line made out of fucking lava, and we were both unauthorized to cross it. “Where’re you off to today?”
“The Social Circle.” She bit her lip nervously, her purple eyes glittering. “It’s an exclusive social club for the rich and famous. They’re looking for an assistant manager. Great salary. Superb benefits. And, of course, this is the playground for the kind of men I want to bag, so Cocksucker could finally be out of the picture.”
“They’ll love you,” I said, and meant it, still touching my cock, in case she noticed and wanted to go for a joystick ride before the job interview. “You’re hardworking, highly motivated, not to mention fucking stunning. Most places just can’t sponsor you at a moment’s notice.”
“I know.” She sighed, then walked over to the shoe rack and pulled out a pair of heels. “It’s so bloody frustrating.”
