Chapter 17: The Great Mall Adventure...

"Oooooh, shit, man! Look! Shit!"

"Fuck—what? What?" J'Von grimaced. The jostling hand on his shoulder made him squeeze his Big Mac too hard, spurting goop out one side. He worried that it had gotten onto his baggy pants or his Air Jordans. He stepped around, looking down hoping not to see special sauce on anything but the sidewalk.

"That bitch right there!" Tony continued, urging and pointing out at the convertible waiting at the light. J'Von and Mike both looked over across the street and the car.

"Damn, now that's a piece of ass," Mike observed sagely.

"Yeah, but you gotta go grabbin' me like that?" J'Von said, his expression still pointedly disapproving.

The last thing he wanted was a stain running down his pants all night. It annoyed J'Von that Tony wasn't looking at the plainly very intimidating stare he was giving.

"That's the bitch who fucked Damon to death last year!" Tony said. He kept his voice just controlled enough so as not to be heard across the street.

J'Von's scowl only deepened. "What?" he said in a high-pitched, skeptical tone. But Tony was off running already, headed up the block to watch the car as it made a left turn and headed around the block. "Crazy fuckin' cracker," he muttered. J'Von sometimes took a lot of heat from other friends for keeping a white boy like Tony around, but he stood his ground on the topic. He and Tony had been tight since they'd been thrown out of middle school together, and J'Von was bigger than all that racial bullshit.

Only sometimes Tony would go acting like a crazy white boy in front of other people. J'Von knew it wasn't because he was white; he knew crazy black folks, too. But that didn't make it any easier to defend Tony when he went running off after cars in the middle of downtown claiming that one of the occupants had killed a homey with her snatch.

"Your boy's trippin', man," Mike said, shaking his head. The two watched as Tony stood at the corner looking on at the convertible.

"Yeah, don't I know," J'Von muttered, and then called out, "Tony! Man, get back here!" He got a good bite out of his Big Mac as Tony jogged back to the other two men. Doubtlessly, settling whatever was up Tony's ass might take until his burger cooled, and that would make J'Von even more irritated.

"They just went into the mall. That's her, I'm sure of it."

"What the hell are you talkin' about?" Mike asked.

"Last year? Like, at that New Year's party, right? It was just after Tyrel got popped by the cops for bustin' a cap in—"

"We know," J'Von said firmly. He also knew it was really Damon who'd been the shooter. Tyrel was nowhere near it, but there was no telling the cops that without ratting out Damon, and nobody wanted to be a snitch. Even if it meant Tyrel would go to prison. Everyone had pressured Damon to come clean or something, all to no avail, and then Damon turned up dead a few days later. "What about it?"

"Look, I know you was in lock-up, but at the party there was this fine ass white girl. She hooked up with Damon -- told his girl, Kimesha to sit down and shut up and she did, man, his girl shut right the fuck up -- and then she just went upstairs to Damon's apartment and they started goin' at it, man. Fuckin' screamin', bed makin' all kinda noise, like, 'Oh! Oh! Fuck me, Damon! Oh shit!'"

"Tony!" J'Von frowned, "Don't make me slap you."

Tony waved it off, but pointedly he calmed down. "Right, so they were up there the rest of the night, right? Only I had left my phone up in Damon's apartment before the party, 'cause we were all playin' on his X-Box. So I had to go back there, only I go up and I hear 'em bangin' away still the next damn day, man. Only I didn't wanna interrupt, 'cuz that's not cool, so I left.

"But Kimesha? She interrupted, man. Like a lot. Or tried to, anyway. She went shoutin' and knockin' at that door like three different times that day and the next, she said, and she kept hearing the same shit, too. More poundin', more fuckin'. She's yellin' at them through the door an' neither one of 'em stop for nothin'."

Mike seemed to think it was amusing, and it would've been as well to J'Von had it not been for his poor, neglected Big Mac. Instead, he just stared at Tony. He'd heard something of this story before, but not in such detail. Damon hooked up with some white porn star-looking bitch at New Year's and then was found dead in his apartment a few days later, nothing more.

"An' then the next day, it's like day three now, I go by his apartment again 'cause he ain't answerin' his phone, an' I still hear fuckin', but I don't hear Damon no more. Not like I did before. Just a bit of wheezing or something."

Mike laughed, and made a mimicking motion and wheezing noise to give his impression of an elderly man giving it to a woman from behind. He smacked an imaginary ass with a shaking, arthritic hand.

"And then the next day Kimesha went by again and smelled somethin' awful in his apartment, and got the landlord... and Damon was stone cold dead, motherfucker."

J'Von sighed. "So?"

"So, man, that bitch fucked him to death." Mike burst out laughing again.

However, Tony was serious. "And nobody saw Damon's stash or any of the money he'd been sitting on after that, remember?"

J'Von frowned and nodded. He did remember that part. He didn't know about this story of Damon's death, though, because nobody had told him about it. Nobody had asked Kimesha for her side of things, because nobody really liked that angry bitch anyway. The one silver lining in Damon's death was that Kimesha didn't come around anymore.

The thing was, Damon had died while moving more than a little coke. The other side of the deal swore after his death that he'd been paid -- they had wanted the coke in time for New Year's Eve in the first place -- but nobody on Damon's side of it had seen their shares of the money yet. Most had assumed that the cops had seized the cash when they collected Damon's body, and nobody wanted to expose their knowledge or involvement by trying to find out.

Neither J'Von nor Mike were gullible enough to believe that Damon had died from too much pussy. That was just stupid. But the notion that he'd brought a woman as hot as that one up to his apartment and had her there just before he'd died was believable, especially if for some reason she knew about all that money. And there she was, riding around with some white boy in a Lexus convertible.

Damon had died. Tyrel had gone to jail partly because Damon wasn't around to clear his name -- not that he'd have ever done so, realistically. And all that money just disappeared.

"They went in the mall parking garage?" J'Von asked.

************

Lorelei smelled him almost as soon as they came off the escalator from the bottom floor. She knew what he was from the scent, though not who specifically, and had a pretty decent idea of where in the mall she would find him if she was right. There were better than even odds that he would not be so quick to detect her presence, at least not right away. But turning around would do no good; once aware that she'd been around, he might realize her condition and consider her vulnerable. This had to be dealt with, quickly and decisively... and preferably not in front of Alex.

"I would guess that you don't have a clear idea of what sort of clothes you'd like to see me in," she said coolly, "at least in public."

"Not really," Alex shrugged. "I figured you should just wear whatever you like. You look really good now, but I'd bet you'd look good in anything. I'd be happy with you in jeans and a t-shirt."

"Hm. You do prefer a bit of glamour, though. That much is plain."

"Well, I don't know who doesn't appreciate someone going to the trouble of looking good, but I wouldn't expect that all the time. Can't be wine & roses every night of the week."

"Silly master," she smiled.

"Hey, you should really call me Alex," he whispered to her.

"Oh, no one's listening to us... Alex," she added as a concession. "What you mean to say is that because you do not go to great effort for fashion, you wouldn't expect it of others."

"I try to look good sometimes," he mumbled defensively.

"You love various goth looks," Lorelei said, "and also business casual with a hint of sexiness. You have several heart-pounding memories of girls in formalwear from a couple of dances in high school. I imagine you would rejoice if all the world's hipsters died in flames?"

"I wouldn't want to use that turn of phrase in front of someone like you, but yeah, I can't stand hipsters. Trying too hard to make a point of looking like they're not trying. Past that, I just... guess I just like whatever works for a given woman? If you want me to pick out clothes for you, it's going to be a disaster. I want you to get what you know makes you look good. I'm pretty sure that's just about anything."

Lorelei nodded. "I can accept that." She slipped her hand in his. "However, we should begin at the beginning." Lorelei started walking with calm, confident purpose toward a shop that Alex hadn't dared set foot in since he was ten years old and at his mother's side.

"Um," he tried to protest, "this is a lingerie store."

"It's not especially racy. There is more here than lingerie."

"Yeah, like five tight shirts and some hand lotion," Alex said. She did not slow down; they were really going into this trendy, spacious store for things that Alex honestly didn't know how to discuss with other women without sounding perverted.

"I would prefer a more upscale store specializing in much more alluring intimate wear," Lorelei admitted, "and the selections here for women with my endowments are a bit limited, but we were going for casual, right?"

"Isn't bringing me in here going to be... um..."

"Awkward? No. Many ladies bring their men in here to explain what they'd like to see in the bedroom. Isn't that right?" Lorelei asked the sales associate that was suddenly right in front of the couple.

In point of fact, her appearance wasn't sudden at all, but Alex wasn't even sure where he was supposed to be looking. He was pretty sure that his presence here must make half the customers feel very self- conscious (not that he was paid any obvious attention), and was even more sure that he was the only male in the whole store -- well, apart from the guy over there, but even that dude had obvious man- boobs. So he wasn't looking where Lorelei was leading him until the other woman spoke.

"Not at all," she smiled boldly, getting right into the spirit of things. Alex's gaze rose up from the floor to trace quickly up those shapely legs in black lace stockings, a tight, knee-length black skirt, flat belly and ample bust under a black tee, where his eyes finally settled on her rather pretty face. Pert nose, smooth skin, short, curly black hair. Amusement in her almond eyes.

"Hi, I'm Audrey," she said, offering her hand. "I'm the store manager."

Alex blinked. Store managers didn't offer to shake hands. She was clearly fucking with him only because this was so embarrassing. He considered dying, right there on the spot. Instead, he simply shook her hand and mumbled, "Hi, I'm Alex."

Audrey winked. Then, as Lorelei spoke again, her expression seemed to change. The hot lingerie store manager started looking at Alex like he would make an exciting addition to her bedroom furniture.

"My boyfriend here has been a bit deprived," Lorelei said to Audrey. She was standing a bit closer to the other woman than she needed to, speaking almost directly into her ear. Alex was a bit too out of sorts to really pick up on it. "He's -- well, forgive me for being so forward, but he's a thrill a minute in the bedroom. I'd do literally anything he asked of me, but he just doesn't know what to ask for. No idea what to call things, really. Religious upbringing."

"I see," Audrey nodded. Her eyes were locked on Alex's.

"So now that he's free to enjoy himself, I'd love make sure he has a good time. You know, wear the right things to drive him mad. I couldn't blame any woman for throwing herself at him... Anyway, I think he knows what he likes, but he could still stand an education from an expert."

"I'd be more than happy to help," Audrey offered. Her chest rose and fell a bit heavily.

"I've got a lot of shopping to do, and the mall won't be open too much longer," Lorelei said. "Could I leave him in your capable hands? I'm sure he'll show a lot of gratitude."

"Absolutely," Audrey said. She still had his hand.

Lorelei leaned over and kissed his neck. "Let go and have some fun, master," she hissed. "It will be good for all three of us."

"What -- are you leaving?" Alex blinked.

"I've a couple of other places to visit here, and not much time tonight," Lorelei said as she walked away. "I'll know when you're ready to leave."