Jeremy 13
“Oh my God! The look on his face must have been hilarious!” Lisa giggles as she lays naked on her stomach in my bed.
“Yeah, it was spectacular,” I chuckle. “I wish I’d had a camera. How long did it take for Doug to come out of there after I left?”
I’m laying on my side, running my hands up and down from her bare back, to her perfect ass and back again. She kicks her long legs up playfully.
“Oh, God, it was nearly two hours. When he did come out, he was holding his jacket in front of him and he couldn’t even look at me. He just mumbled something about not feeling well and going home for the rest of the day.”
She rolls onto her side so we are facing one another. The thing about Lisa is that she’s a ‘Butter Face.’ No, she doesn’t have greasy skin. It’s what they call a girl who has a hot body, but an ugly face. In other words, everything ‘But her face’ is attractive. She has a large nose that looks as if it’s been broken in one too many bar fights. Her brow is extremely pronounced, giving her a kind of Cro-Magnon look. Add to that a forehead that you could park a jetliner on, and you’ve got Lisa. It’s too bad, really. A little investment in plastic surgery and she could be a seven or an eight. As it stands, her body alone gets her a six, but then you have to subtract four points for the face. Two. I’m in bed with a two. The things I do to get what I want.
“Jeremy, I’m sorry,” she interrupts my thoughts. “I didn’t know he was going to do that. There was no mention of it at the board meeting last week. I mean, I knew they were trying to get rid of you, but I didn’t know it would be like this. Today.”
She should be sorry. Thanks to her, I walked right into a fucking ambush. But I can’t afford to cut her loose just yet.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say as I reach over and brush the bangs from the tarmac/forehead. “What’s important is what Doug does in the next couple of days. Keep your eyes out for a press release about my promotion, approval for an increase in my pay, and Jennifer’s demotion. You’ll have access to all that paperwork, won’t you?”
“What’s it worth to you, big guy?” she smiles suggestively.
“Oh, I think I can make it worth your while,” I say, closing the distance between our bodies.
“So soon? My, my, Mr. Corrigan, you’ve got some impressive stamina!” she murmurs, meeting me halfway.
“It’s just my hard work ethic,” I murmur just before I take her mouth in mine. I groan involuntarily when I feel her hand on my cock.
“Very hard work ethic, I’d say,” Lisa chuckles again as she gives me alternating squeezes and strokes. Damn. This girl knows her way around the equipment. Okay, I’ll play.
I roll onto my back, flag at full mast, and she follows me across to my side of the bed, starting a trail of soft kisses at my left shoulder and making her way down, down, down. When she reaches her destination, she looks up at me with a dirty little smile. Did I mention her teeth are yellowed, too? Before I can comment, her tongue wraps around me like warm, wet velvet. I arch with the contact and close my eyes.
If I don’t have to look at her, I can pretend she’s the freshman horn student who took home a sample of my DNA along with an autographed program as a souvenir from our last concert. Yeah. That’s who I’m going think about. Lisa licks me gently from stem to stern, building tension little by little. Then, when I think I’m going to have to just flip her over and fuck her to get some relief, she has me in her mouth with the suction of a Hoover vac.
“Fuck, baby, that’s good,” I moan, getting my hands into her hair. I ball my fists and use it to direct her back and forth, up and down. She takes every direction immediately. When I feel the nibble of her teeth on me, I literally see stars. And then, her hands are in the mix, cupping my balls, squeezing the bottom of my shaft. Oh, yeah. Easily the best blowjob I’ve had since Brett’s girlfriend blew me in high school. And that was more about screwing him than her.
I’d have banged Lisa even if she’d been some middle-aged cow in spandex. Not because I wanted to, but because I needed to. The key to manipulating Doug is manipulating the person who holds all of Doug’s keys. Literally, and figuratively. As his assistant, Lisa is privy to every meeting. She can eavesdrop on any phone call. She sees every bit of paperwork that comes across his desk and has access to the personnel files of every musician in the orchestra. It also works to my advantage that she can’t stand Doug, who’s done nothing but try and cop a feel since the day he hired her. She’s only too happy to stick it to him by letting me stick it to her. Sounds like a win-win to me.
****
‘MURDERER!’
The word is written in six-inch block letters on my locker at the concert hall. No one says anything as I stand there staring at it, but I can feel the darting glances of my colleagues behind me. I pull out my horn and music, and make my way out to the stage for rehearsal without comment. When I arrive at the first horn spot, there’s a piece of paper taped to the music stand with the same handwriting, this time spelling out the word THIEF! I don’t bother to tear it down, just put my music folder over it and pull out the Mahler Symphony we’re working on today.
“It was there when I sat down,” volunteers Graham, our second horn player. “I – I wasn’t sure if I should take it down before you saw it …”
“Doesn’t bother me,” I mumble before putting my horn to my lips and starting my run of scales.
While I play, my eyes move across the rows of musicians around me. I don’t think it’s any of the string players. They’re just too absorbed in their own little world to be concerned with what goes on behind them. That knocks out about half the orchestra right there. It might be a woodwind player, but something tells me I should be looking at the brass players sitting all around me.
I use my peripheral vision to check out Jennifer, now situated down in the third horn chair. She has a brand new horn already, and she looks relaxed for a change, confident even. She may or may not think I had something to do with the disappearance of her instrument, but she’s gotten a better one out of the deal, and is finally playing the part she wanted all along. I’m sure I can rule out the other two horns in our section, Graham on second and Latondra on fourth. They do a pretty good job of staying out of the drama – horn players are smart that way. Trombone players, not so much. That’s where my money is.
Still ripping up and down the scales, I angle to the right just enough to catch two of the trombone players with their heads together, looking my way and snickering. Gus and Terrance. That would be them. Fucking cowards are too chicken shit to accuse me to my face, so they hide behind their music stands like a couple of gossiping teenagers.
The Concert Master stands up to face the orchestra and gives the first oboe the nod to give us an A to tune to. A few moments later, the Maestro comes out and sits down on the podium, reading glasses on as he examines the score in front of him.
“All right,” he begins, looking up at us. “We have a great deal of work to do on this Mahler. Horns, there are two extras coming in for the rehearsal this afternoon. They will fill out the section for the concert. Jeremy, I leave it to you to arrange rehearsals for your section. Yes?”
“Yes, Maestro,” I agree loud and clear.
From behind me, one of the trombone players gives a loud, fake sneeze that comes out sounding a lot like the word ‘Thief!’ I ignore it, and the Maestro doesn’t catch it.
“Also, Jeremy, I think I would like the entire horn section to stand for the last two minutes or so of the symphony. That will require all parts to be memorized. This is possible, yes?”
“Yes, Maestro,” I repeat.
The sneezer repeats, too, but now with the word ‘Murderer!’ as the underlying expletive. This time, the Maestro notices. He takes his glasses off and puts them down on the stand in front of him, peering back to the lower brass section.
“Who is the sneezer?” he growls. It takes us all a few seconds to translate. In his accent the question sounds more like ‘who eest zee shneeza?’
Gus raises a hand slowly.
“Stand up,” the Maestro demands. Gus gets to his feet, very reluctantly. I would be reluctant, too. This guy looks pissed.
“You tink dis eesht funny? You tink you are in da kindergarten, yes?”
“Yes. I mean, No! N-no, Maestro,” Gus splutters, his face coloring.
“You are zee professional und you vill act as one, or I vill call one of my players from Vienna to take your seat. Yes?”
“Yes, Maestro.”
After the rehearsal, I lock up my horn in the defaced locker and make a point of walking past Gus and Terrance. When I stop in front of them, they look up from where they are packing their instruments.
“You know, you’re such fucking pussies,” I spit as I shake my head at them. “If you want to say something, just say it to my face. But if you insist on taking a page out of the Junior High School Playbook, then at least own it. Jesus Christ. Grow some balls already, will you?”
I walk away before either of them can comment, smiling all the way out the backstage door. Where young Jimmy Woo is waiting for me. My smile heads south, and fast.
“What are you doing here?” I hiss at him, motioning for him to follow me around the corner and into the alley.
“Jeremy, man, I’m in trouble,” he whispers.
“What? What happened?”
I’m getting the feeling that his trouble is about to become my trouble.
“It’s that horn, man. Someone pulled it out of the dumpster and tried to pawn it.”
“What?”
He starts speaking quickly, nervously. “Yeah! Someone found it, pawned it, and I guess it was reported stolen.”
I take a deep breath and try to stay calm. “Alright. So, what does this have to do with you?”
“My fingerprints were on it.”
“And why would that matter?” I’m still not getting what the runt is trying to tell me.
He looks down at his sneakers and then up at me again. “A couple years ago, I got pinched for shoplifting. The police have my fingerprints and they matched them to the horn.”
Damn! Stupid little shit should have told me he had a record. And what the fuck was he thinking, not wearing gloves? Christ! Does anyone besides me have any common sense? I close my eyes in a concerted effort to not strangle this kid. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in …
“Jeremy, the police came around the restaurant asking questions. I got out of there before they could see me. But they’re looking for me now, man, and I don’t know what to do. You’ve got to help me!” His eyes are wide with the desperation I can hear in his voice.
“Okay, so you haven’t spoken with anyone yet? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He shakes his head no. Okay. I can work with this. I put my hands on his shoulders and make certain his eyes are locked on mine. We’re going to walk this thing back.
“Jimmy, you just need to tell them that you moved the horn when you brought in the food order. It was in your way and you set it aside. They can’t prove anything else. You’re in that building all the time. It’s not a stretch that your fingerprints would be on an instrument.”
“Do you think they’ll believe that?” he asks skeptically.
They better, you little shit.
“I do,” I reassure him. “You just act surprised that they would even ask you. The last time you saw the horn, you had moved it over a few inches so you could sort out the dinner orders for the musicians backstage. And, if they start to press, you start yelling about racial profiling. ‘Sure, blame the Chinese kid!’ That kind of shit. Do you think you can pull it off?” I ask, looking for any sign of weakness in his eyes.
He takes a deep breath in and nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I can do that, Jeremy. I’m sorry, man, I was just …I was just scared and I didn’t know what to do.”
“You did the right thing coming to me first. But remember, Jimmy, no matter what they offer, or threaten, my name never comes up. Never. Do you understand me?”
I see the fear return as he stares into my face, which I have made into an icy mask. He should be scared. I can do a lot more to him than the police can.
He nods again, more enthusiastically this time. “I do. I understand, Jeremy. You didn’t have nothing to do with this shit. No matter what. I swear.”
My expression thaws, and I reward him with a smile and a playful punch on the shoulder. “Excellent! You’re going to get through this just fine, Jimmy. And I promise I will make it worth your while on the back end.”
Unless, of course, you fuck this up, and then my punches won’t be so playful anymore.