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1
TRAVIS
Who ever said owning a healthy assortment of exotic pets was a problem? Apparently, my downstairs neighbor did.
A noise complaint? I looked around my penthouse apartment for the most likely suspects. Rat, my giant monitor lizard, dragged his scaly belly across the ground as he passed by. He was molting, so it sounded a bit like furniture scraping across sandpaper. Then there was my parrot, Windbag. He squawked and flapped his wings by the window. A moment later, Mr. Meatball, one of my cats, failed a jump towards the window and knocked my laptop to the ground with a clatter.
“Well,” I said, dusting my hands together. “It looks like I’m just going to have to buy the downstairs neighbor out of their apartment, won’t I?”
I tossed on a coat, ran a hand through my hair, then headed for the elevator. There were a few work tasks I needed to handle before dinner, but one of the primary benefits of being the best at what you do is getting to make your own schedule. In other words, I’d get to the work when I got to it. My partners knew by now that they couldn’t rush my genius, anyway.
My downstairs neighbor was in apartment 4B. I knocked my knuckles in a cheery little rhythm on the door and waited, hands in my pockets.
To my mild surprise, a young woman opened the door. It was six in the evening on a Saturday, but she wore an outfit fit for the boardroom. She had her blonde hair pulled back into a no-nonsense ponytail. Her skirt was cream colored to match her modest, silky top. I felt immediately curious to know what she was like between the sheets. Stiff as a stone? Scowling while she mechanically rocked her hips? I wondered if she could even un-purse her lips long enough to give a proper blowjob.
“What do you want?” she asked. She actually managed to look me straight in the eye and without the slightest hint of red in her cheeks.
Oh, my, I thought. It wasn’t every day that I met a woman who didn’t get nervous at the sight of me. Well, that was fixable. The plan had been to buy her out, but that was when I pictured some grouchy, balding man. But this woman practically had the word “challenge” buzzing over her head in gaudy neon lights. And I’d always been drawn to bright lights.
I flashed my best smile, then planted my hand on her door frame. “There’s some kind of mix-up,” I said. “The apartment manager just told me you filed a noise complaint.”
“And?” she asked. She folded her arms. They were just slightly toned. Mrs. Boardroom kept herself in shape. The more I looked at her, the more I liked what I saw. She held her face in an expression between a scowl and a frown, but I knew I’d be able to fix that with a little alone time.
