“Excellent, huh?” He grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “This upcoming weekend I will see you again. We’ll go out to dinner. After that, you’ll see me again. You won’t know when or where, but I’ll pop up, and you better do as you’re told. Or else.” He was still smiling, but his words damn sure didn’t match his expression.
“Two months of this and you think you can win me over?”
“I already am and we’re only a couple days in…”
She hated how turned on she was by this brutish caveman with a penchant for rubbing her the right and the wrong way. He grabbed her once again, secured her to the center of the bed, and worked his way down her body. She bristled and sighed when he resumed his place between her legs, licking slow and steady, teasing her so.
“You’re so strange to me… but now I want to know everything about you, Nix.” She grabbed a fistful of the sheet. “These next couple of months I have truly no idea what to expect from you.”
“That’s the whole damn idea…”
CHAPTER NINE
Call Me Daddy
Nixon left the office, his heart slammed against his chest. The sun was barely visible as it disappeared quietly behind the tall concrete buildings, their rectangular, glass bones reflecting the last slivers of its rays. His keys dangled in his hand, making a strange beat in sync with his steps. The song of well-known sounds played like an old record when he opened his car door, took his seat, started the engine, and pulled away from his assigned parking spot at the law firm.
“Call Dad.” He loosened his black tie then waited, swallowing his last nerve. Ring after ring. You son of a bitch. Answer this damn phone…
“Hello.” Nixon breathed a sigh of relief. “You musta got word that God forbid, Maria doesn’t hear from me for four fuckin’ seconds. Only hear from you nowadays when she trumps up one of her tragedies.” The raspy voice of an old man that chain smoked cigarettes for the majority of his life and lived to tell the tale crept through the car speakers.
“Well, she worries about you sometimes. Maria said you hadn’t been answering your phone lately.”
“Oh? I didn’t realize I had to hop to it every time she called.”
“Dad, don’t start your shit.”
“What shit? It’s the truth! I don’t see any of my four kids jumpin’ through hoops to answer me all the damn time! I could call you and tell ya I was slipping around in my own piss because I fell, and you’d say, ‘I never knew you were an ice skater on Golden Pond! Gotta go! Gotta go!”
“I see you’re in the mood to twist this around and make jokes. I’m not falling for your banana in the tailpipe tricks to derail me from the main topic. YOU. When we don’t hear from you, Dad, we grow concerned.” The old man huffed as if he were hearing a bunch of gibberish. “You sorta live by yourself. Your health history isn’t exactly stellar, either. Gotta make sure you’re still alive and breathing.” He approached a red light and switched on his stereo system. Steve Lacy’s ‘Some’ started to play through the speakers.
“I’m married. I don’t live by myself,” the old guy murmured, sounding offended.
“Dad, Sophie is never home, all right? You may as well say you live by yourself. She’s gone weeks at a time.” Sophie was his, Maria, Tonya and Leonardo’s stepmother. She’d been with his father for a long ass time, but her career as a Marketing Director for AT&T kept her busy. “Well, since you’re fine, I’ll give Maria a call and tell her that you—”
“You and your sister thought I was over here passed out drunk, didn’t ya?” Nixon lit a cigar, cracked the window, and eased his way to the left on Michigan Avenue. “Well? Didn’t ya?”
“Dad, I didn’t know what the hell you were doin’, to be quite honest. But I knew that, with you, anything was a possibility.”
“How dare you? I haven’t gotten wasted in ten damn years and four months! The audacity of you people!”
“You people?” He chuckled. “You mean your concerned children? Those people?”
“You’re not concerned—just worried you’d have to foot the bill for some elaborate funeral where everyone gathers around and lies about what an amazing guy I was and all that other bullshit. People who