Coming Together: Against the Odds
edited by
Alessia Brio
Coming Together: Against the Odds
Alessia Brio, editor
Copyright © 2010 Alessia Brio
All digital rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Cover art © 2010 Alessia Brio
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Coming Together Production
Smashwords edition
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/comingtogether
License Notes
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TABLE of CONTENTS
Introduction
It was a wonderful particularity of so many of the old pulp magazines, if the fare on sale involved detectives or crime, that there should be an undraped young woman in some state of vestimentary disarray on the cover, whether fleeing from—or squeezed in the murderous grip of—some fearsome robot or extraterrestrial monster with tentacles to spare in the case of science fiction, fantasy, or horror magazines, or shrieking silently in the presence of a nearby arsenal of guns and other blunt instruments wielded by a moustachioed villain.
Ah, those were the days!
You knew what you were about to get.
The fact that many of those now legendary magazines also boasted stories by the likes of Robert A. Heinlein, Dashiell Hammett, Isaac Asimov, or Raymond Chandler—stuff that has wonderfully survived both the passage of time and the coming of political correctness on magazine covers—easily demonstrates that the visuals on offer seldom had much relevance to the tales published inside those now-yellowing pages.
Thus was I mistaken from an early age onwards in thinking that genre literature, which I have never tired of as both reader and writer, automatically entailed thrills of a gently sexual nature. So, when in my teens I began writing romantic tales of lost planets and galactic corsairs, I as a matter of course liberally added love stories and damsels in a state of undress and even a hint of sexuality. Now I know why I was never a successful science fiction writer! Sex in space? The readers clearly disapproved.
I later moved on to writing crime and mystery, albeit in a rather noir way, but even though the field lent itself even better to the introduction of sexual mores, publishers and readers soon made it abundantly clear that it should be kept off the page or, at any rate, between chapters.
But for me, stories—whether they be SF, crime, whatever genre—are primarily about human beings: men and women. And the interaction between them, which somehow does entail a fair amount of sex. Call me a sexual obsessive, but I strongly believe that sex is one of the main things that makes all of us tick and accordingly, should be part and parcel of any story that is written. You cannot pretend to understand even a portion of the abyss that is the human mind and condition without taking sex and relationships into account.
Which probably explains why I have become more of an erotic writer, even though I still liberally adopt plots and situations openly influenced by primarily the crime and mystery genre in my stories of love and fury, of sorrow and death. It took me a long time, but I finally found my niche as a big fish in a small pond. It is a stretch of water I finally feel comfortable swimming in.
This 'Coming Together' anthology skims over many genres from crime and mystery to even SF, but most importantly, it is full of consummate storytelling. And those stories, full of blood, sex, secretions, emotions and excitement, are all the more alive for their uncensored view of human frailties and sexual encounters of all kinds. Which in my eyes, makes them real, believable.
Regardless of gender, I wouldn't mind being a protagonist in any of these stories, providing I reach the end page alive, of course... So I envy you this journey through these pages: some of the writers I already knew from having had the pleasure of publishing them in my annual Mammoth Erotica anthologies, while others were new to me. But they are all magicians in whose hands word becomes flesh: an alchemy that only the best erotic writing can offer.
Enjoy at your peril.
~ Maxim Jakubowski
~ * ~
Will She Kiss Me?
Giselle Renarde
Will she kiss me?
Will she kiss me
If I tilt my head and sway?
If I close my eyes half-way,
Will she kiss me?
Should I kiss her?
When she smiles with all her charm
And she presses on my arm,
Should I kiss her?
Will she kiss me
If I gaze at her and sigh?
If I softly stroke her thigh,
Will she kiss me?
Should I kiss her?
When she leans in close and speaks
Of the thrill my presence piques,
Should I kiss her?
Will she kiss me?
If I lick my lips and say
That I thought of her all day,
Will she kiss me?
Should I kiss her?
When she squeezes on my knee,
And her gaze is more a plea,
Should I kiss her?
Will she kiss me?
Should I kiss her?
Will she kiss me?
Should I kiss her?
Will she kiss me?
Should I kiss her?
Will she?
Kiss me!
~ * ~
www.freewebs.com/gisellerenarde
Under a Moving Star
Angela Caperton
Central Park was like a vast, dark pool, and I was a swimmer. Most nights the pool was empty except for bums and desperate lovers. Other nights, it was full of sharks. Tonight, strange fish filled the pool, blocking the sidewalks, clumps of them in the shadows, gathered around metal tubes, goggle-eyed behind binoculars.
All of them watching the sky.
I passed two guys arguing about the election, one of them saying that if Stevenson beat Ike, the Reds would be in Jersey by January. I wondered why the Reds would even want Jersey.
I swam deeper into the pool, and the stars overhead watched me, but everyone else was lost in the endless pit of the night sky. The dome of heaven, they call it, but hell, it's not even a ceiling.
Clear as Waterford, full of blue sparkles you couldn't see at all from Fifth, but in the Sheep Meadow, we might have been out in the country or on a beach somewhere. I skirted the little knots of men gathered around telescopes and avoided the press of a crowd of thirty or forty Episcopalians who had arrived together on a bus.
"I hear there's a dog in it," someone said.
"A red dog."
"Must be a Setter." And they all laughed, but the laughter was brittle and sharp as my nerves.
For November, the night was almost warm, and my gray Glen Brae jacket and overcoat were enough to keep the chill away. The Episcopalians' collective breath made wispy fog.
I swam through, heading east, in the wake of a fish named Martin Goodman, who was hiding something from his wife. My client, the wife, was a pretty, petite blonde, and she thought her husband might be in trouble. She also knew he'd been seeing another woman. She'd hired me to shadow him and, believe it or not, to protect him.
My name's Jack Cain, professional snoop. I work out of the same place I live, a three-room arrangement above Maxie's Diner down on Thirty-First. I keep the weasels away, and Maxie gives me a break on the rent.
Goodman was a big man, but he was soft from too many years behind a desk. He looked just like the picture his wife had given me. Tonight he was wearing a natural wool sweater that made him easy to pick out in the dark. I stayed twenty feet behind him, keeping darkness to my back, mingling with the crowd or the shadows any time I thought he might turn around. We worked our way east and south, toward the zoo.
When he cleared the edge of sky-watchers, I dropped back, and I wasn't surprised when a slender shape came out of the night to meet him. I smelled her perfume at thirty feet, lilacs and musk, and I could imagine how she felt, pressing against him urgently in the dark, her voice anxious. They passed under a lamp, and I saw her face: a long nose, wide-set eyes, good cheekbones. I'd know her if I saw her again.
"Martin, you have to go," she said. "You have to go now."
They passed out of the light and into darkness, so I moved closer, trying to look up and watch them at the same time, just another stargazer.
"I know," he said. "But not without you. I love you."
Then I saw the sharks, just as someone in the crowd yelled, "There it is!" There was a rush of caught breath and the silence that only a crowd can create, and four big shadows rose up around Martin and his illicit love.
The little light in the sky seemed very far away.
Martin's girl screamed, and the noise rippled through the scattered multitude, but they all had their eyes on the sky. I wanted to look up too, but the sharks had my full attention.
One of them grabbed Martin and held him close, just like Martin had held his girlfriend a moment before, and I heard the rasp of Goodman's breath like the sound an air pump would make if its hose was wet and ragged.
Two of the others had the girl, and they were disappearing into the shadows, then the fourth one saw me.
He came at me like a bull, if a bull could run without making a sound. The crowd had begun to murmur with nervous jokes and even a little laughter.
"It's just a light," somebody said.
I did a Hemingway and sidestepped the bull, punching his kidney. I'm not big, but I'm fast, and I can break a plank with my fist. He wasn't nearly as hard as a plank, but he took the punch, staggering only a little, in a disappointing way. I hit him again, right under the ear, and he went down.
But by then the man with the knife was on me too, and I felt the blade shear my overcoat under the arm. I smelled my own sweat and lilac and musk as he hit me in the gut.
"It ain't nothing," a Bronx voice said. "It's just a light."
"But it's in space," someone yelled at him. "Outer space."
Somehow my knees had fallen to my feet and the knifeman caught me by the collar and jerked me up so I was looking right into his face.
I knew the bastard.
Frank Dexter—a Fed.
Frank put a finger under my upper lip. "Be smart, Jackie," he said, not without kindness, and then his fist came down, drowning me in the depthless pool of the sky where a single light moved silently, like God's first tear.
* * * *
A park cop woke me up, as gently as his kind knows how. I had a lump as big as my fist on the back of my head, and the boys wanted to haul me down to NYH for a going over, but I talked them out of it. They settled for a round of questioning in the back of a wagon.
With my wallet gone and the bump on my head, they put it down as a robbery. They said I was luckier than the guy with two smiles. I told them I thought there had been a woman with him, and they made a note of that and then told me to go home and not even think of leaving town.
Standard stuff anytime a private dick stumbles into cop business.
I borrowed two bucks from a sergeant I knew and took a cab home, trying to sort through all the crap that had happened in just two days.
It had started, of course, with the blonde in my office. I'll spare you the clichés about her eyes and the nyloned length of her legs, but she had my full attention. Most of my clients are older folks, either wanting proof of infidelity or to help their kid who's on the wrong side of the law or the rackets. I also collect debts, trace backgrounds, and walk dogs.
But Mrs. Goodman, Jana, didn't want any of my standard services.
"My husband is terrified," she had told me. "But he won't tell me why. I want you to keep him safe."
"You have any guesses why he's scared?"
She spent a long time searching her purse for a cigarette. I leaned forward and lit it for her, and she took a puff before she replied. "I think the Russians want to kill him," she said.
I managed not to smile. "What kind of work does your husband do, Mrs. Goodman?"
"He works for the government. He talks to newspapers and radio stations. Sometimes he goes out to Hollywood. He knows all kinds of people out there. He knows Jack Warner."
The smoke made a halo over her pretty head.
"The Russians want to kill him because of his job?"
"It's this thing, this Sputnik thing. Marty's been watching it like it's life or death, all the news, the papers."
She took a long draw, and her breasts reared up like proud puppies. I exhaled with her.
"There's more. There's a woman. She called the house last night, and I answered the phone. Not a voice I knew, and she asked for Marty. She sounded… nervous, and after he hung up, Marty wouldn't tell me who she was, but he was more worried than ever."
"You thought of going to the police?"
She shook her head. "I'm not even supposed to know about Marty's job. It's all secret, but you can keep a secret, right?" She looked at me, really looked at me for the first time. People tell me I have kind eyes, and maybe it's true because she sort of melted when her gaze met mine, and then I was holding her and she was crying hard on my shoulder.
So of course I took her case.
* * * *
When I got back to my room, I called Jana Goodman at the number she'd given me. I had her address, in one of the good communities out on Long Island, but I didn't want to go out there without calling. She might be particular about who showed up at her door.
When she answered the phone, I could tell the cops had already talked to her by the flat tone of her voice. The first tears were probably just drying on her cheeks. But she was still a sweetheart. "It's not your fault," she said. "I bet you did all you could. The police said it was a robbery."
I let that go. "Look," I said. "Can I see you? There's things that don't add up here. I'd like to help."
There was a long silence on the other end. I felt like I was being weighed.
"All right. I don't feel very well today, Mr. Cain. Can it wait 'til tomorrow?"
"Of course, Mrs. Goodman. Just tell me when."
Another long silence. "Here, tomorrow at three. Is that okay?"
I remembered her crying on my shoulder, and I guess it makes me a rat, because I wanted to be holding her, wanted to stand between her and whatever had taken her husband away. To protect her if it came after her. I told her I'd see her at three and took a cab to the city morgue.
The guy on duty was Delwyn Muggs. Twenty dollars would buy Delwyn's soul. Ten bought me a look at the contents of Martin Goodman's pockets. His wallet was gone, of course, which left a bunch of keys, a pocketknife, a pack of crushed cigarettes, and a napkin from a bar in Greenwich.
A place called Cristo's.
Even at two in the afternoon, Cristo's felt like midnight. The place was all darkness, every booth shrouded in shadows, none of them really visible from the bar.
The bartender and owner, Cristo himself, wore a little moustache and a discreet earring.
"Afternoon, Jack," he said and poured me a Weller without me even asking. I looked around. As far as I could tell, we were alone. I lit a Camel and sipped the whiskey while Cristo watched me like a bird watches a cat.
I slid Martin's photo across the bar to him, and he picked it up and held it close to study it in the dim light of a Guinness sign. He nodded and returned it to me.
"Name's David something. A regular."
Cristo owed me. I had squared things for him down at the precinct and helped him keep his license more than one time when somebody had complained about his clientele.
"He ever come in with anyone?"
"Not 'til last week, then he was in nearly every night with the same girl."
"Tell me about her," I said, putting the picture away and filling the air with blue smoke.
"Pretty. Long, dark hair. Some kind of accent, European but I couldn't nail it. She was sweet."
"What about David? What was he like?"
"Well, you know the type. He never would admit the truth, even to himself. Said he liked to come in here for the conversation."
"He ever say what he did for a living?"
"He claimed to be a writer. One time I asked him what, and he said 'fiction' and laughed like it was a joke. Another time he told me he was just doing what he had to, until the world was a better place."
I thought about the Russian thing in the sky and remembered that our ancestors read the fall of stars and comets like omens.
"You know anyone who didn't like him?"
Cristo shrugged. "There's always someone," he said.