Las Vegas, Thursday Night
Zelda arrived at the Spring Hills Suites on the Las Vegas Strip, checking into her home away from home for the next two months. In her luggage were the three diaries she’d kept, and somewhere in between writing, she would read the words she’d penned at three different stages of her childhood. It all felt so stupid looking back on it. The three or four smelly boxes, papers, journals, and notes chronicling years of abuse sat there waiting to be read, and Pip’s words echoed in her ears even in her sleep.
I am going to happy.
I deserve some happiness.
Her cell phone chimed with the Ed Sheeran tune she and Scott first danced to at the Vent convention a few months prior. It was not just her ringtone for him. The song was also now her jam. Each time it came on the radio, her mind went back to that first night with Scott. A sexy, mind-altering night of adulterated, pure, animalistic, hot sex.
“Hey, Big Guy,” she said in the line as she answered the phone.
“I managed to sneak away a day early and my plane is landing in about an hour,” he told her.
“Landing where?” she asked, her face scrunched up.
“Vegas, Baby; where else? I am coming early so you can, too,” he said, kicking himself as he looked around the aircraft cabin to see if anyone heard him.
“Listen to you working on your sexy talk,” Zelda said softly.
“I have a few other things I want to work on as well,” he told her, pausing briefly. “Across the street from your hotel is a little bar call Hoolihan’s. Horrible food, warm beer, and it is nice and dark. Wear a skirt and meet me there at 7:30.”
“Oh, okay,” she said suspiciously. “Anything else?”
“I love you,” he said, lowering the octaves in his voice.
“I just bet you do, because I love you back,” Zelda said, clicking off the call.
Before she had a chance to get overly excited, her boss Nathan Ridgeway called. He started by yelling in the phone about the Hurricane, then he yelled about his bursitis, and by the time he made it the third thing, he’d forgotten why he called.
“Mr. Ridgeway, you called to tell me something important,” she encouraged him through gentle persuasion.
“It’s not important, but that Berger guy is guest speaker tomorrow night at some event in Las Vegas. I think it would be a swell idea to hook up with him again and do like a follow-up piece about how vast the ventriloquism field is to purists of the art or something equally as hokey,” Nathan told her.
“Maybe I will find him tonight and hook up with him,” she said, smiling at herself in the oversized mirror. If there was one thing Nathan Ridgeway hit on the head, it was that Zelda was truly looking forward to hooking up with Scott Berger again.
****
ZELDA ARRIVED AT HOOLIHAN’S in a black miniskirt with a flowing design. It was actually a knee length skirt that she rolled the waistband over several times to make the skirt shorter. After all the catcalls and wolf whistles walking along the Boulevard, she entered the dark, smelly tavern, looking for her big handsome man. It wasn’t very crowded for a Thursday night. The regulars sat on stools permanently indented with the impressions of their butts, saturating the room with dark thoughts and deep regrets. Scott sat at the end of the bar, nursing a drink just as he had the night they first met. Instead of sitting beside him, she took a seat a few stools away, giving them same distance as their first encounter.
A soft voice was heard in her ear. “You know you want some company tonight,” the voice said.
Zelda looked up at Scott, whose eyes were down in his drink. She looked over her shoulder at the other sad faces in the bar, earning a smile from a man who resembled Droopy Dog.
“He didn’t say it. I did. Put that drink down and let’s get the real party started in my room,” the voice, now slightly muffled, suggested.
Zelda’s intense brown eyes return to Scott, her focused remained on the man, her man, with his eyes still in his cup, which he lifted, taking a sip of the dark brown liquid. In her estimation, it was the oldest trick in the ventriloquist handbook. Taking a drink while throwing your voice.
“I’m still not amused,” Zelda told Scott.
One of Scott’s hands was under the bar, fiddling with what she assumed was Danny his vent doll. On his other hand, he fingered the glass while his eyes held her stare. One eyebrow arched as if he were challenging her to join in on his game. She twisted her lips in the trademark sister girl annoyance, just as she had before.
From under the counter rose the tiny hat attached to Danny’s tiny ceramic smiling face. “Would you be amused if I told you I was rocking three inches of solid oaken wood for your pleasure?” the little dummy asked.
“No, I would be interested if you told me you wanted me to ride the nine iron you so deftly like to swing,” Zelda threw back at him. “If you ask nicely, I will let your little friend watch.”
Scott started to laugh, almost breaking the character he was trying to portray. “See that booth in the corner? Go slide in it and take your drink. We will meet you there in a second,” he said, using his head to point at Danny.
Zelda, stood, leaning over to flash him some cleavage as she walked unsteadily in the ridiculous high heeled shoes. Her pinky toe hurt and she really believed he was going to have to carry her across the street to their hotel room if she stayed in the shoes for even five more minutes. She slid into the booth as he ordered another round of drinks, then joined her in the dark corner. Danny sat in between them as Scott stared into her eyes. A warm hand touched her thigh.
She thought he would stop, but it slid all the way up until his fingers made contact with her, “Oooh,” she whispered.
He made smalls circles across her clit with his index finger, applying pressure. Her legs opened slightly to give him more access while he expertly moved the soft cotton to the side, slipping his fingers inside of her. The moisture on his fingertips aroused him as thick fingers entered Zelda with a thrust.
“Oh, my,” she said, clinging to his arm.
In and out his fingers worked, as Zelda ground her pelvis against his hand. His eyes never left hers as her eyelids fluttered from the sheer pleasure. His free hand grabbed hers, placing it on his lap, feeling the erection in his pants, she rubbed him, slowly. His breathing uneven as one finger shifted into two, going deeper, faster and harder probing inside of her. Zelda’s head dropped to her chest as her hand squeezed and stroked him. Scott’s eyes never left her face as he plunged his fingers in deeper, waiting for that sound which drove him insane. He added pressure from his thumb to her clit forcing a squeal from her as her legs clamped together. A gush of wetness filled his palm as he watched her face encouraging her to get him there. She didn’t disappoint him. She rubbed him faster through the fabric, squeezing massaging, allowing her finger to run across the perfect mushroom head until he twitched. Danny fell face first into the table as Scott leaned back, his mouth open, a ridiculous wet stain on his pants leg.
He grabbed her hand.
“I need round two,” he said, pulling her arm and standing up with Danny covering the wet spot in his trousers.
Zelda stood as well, but Scott stood immobile as if he had seen a ghost. She peered around him, trying to see what had stopped him mid-stride. An older woman, in her mid-sixties, dressed totally inappropriate for a lady her age smiled a knowing smile at him.
“I thought that was you, Scottie,” the woman said.
“Samantha,” he replied, almost choking on his words. “This is my fiancé, Zelda Fitzsimmons.”
She extended a hand with fingers covered with long red acrylic nails, mumbling a snide greeting to Zelda but keeping her eyes fixed on Scott. “I always wondered what you would look like all grown up,” she said, reaching out to touch him, but Zelda slapped her hands.
“Back up, old lady,” Zelda said. The look on Scott’s face said it all. This woman was a threat. “I’m not going to lie and say it was nice to meet you because it wasn’t. Scott, are we ready?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Good seeing you, Samantha.”
“You too, big guy,” she said winking.
Zelda led Scott out of the bar into the Vegas night, full of car horns, flashing lights, and happy people off to drink themselves into bad decision-making. Her main thoughts were to get out the shoes, get Scott to the hotel room, and find out who the woman was. She didn’t want to ask, but his reaction said almost all she needed to know. It didn’t jibe. She was old. At least by nearly twenty-five years.
They arrived at the hotel, his luggage already in the room. He plopped down on the couch in his love-stained pants, holding Danny like a security blanket. The woman brought back a bad memory that took Zelda’s big hairy man down a rabbit hole to a dark place.
“Scott, who was she?” Zelda asked, taking Danny from his arms and placing the doll in the chair.
“Remember when I told there were three women who broke my heart, Andromeda, Demetria, and you didn’t want to know about the third one,” he said.
“You are not going to sit here and tell me that hoochified old woman was number three, Scott!” she said almost yelling.
“Well, when I was 13 she didn’t look like that. At thirteen, I found her sophisticated and charming, and she could do things I only saw in porn movies,” he said softly. “I was in lust, and she loved me.”
“You were a child!”
“A child with a man’s appetite and a man’s body parts,” he said, shaking his head. “I spent almost every day either with a raging boner or raging hormones. I was miserable, missing my family, couldn’t get a gig and did I mention horny all the damned time?”
“That was no excuse for her to violate a child’s trust,” Zelda said.
“Stop it,” he snapped. “I didn’t fuck her like a child. She treated me like a man and I treated her like a woman.”
“She’s the reason you had the breakdown...Chandler...the weird ass coffee table, all of the darkness, Scott, was because of her,” Zelda said softly.
“Zelda, don’t try and talk to me about my demons while you are still wrestling with your own. When you are ready to read those diaries and deal with your childhood like an adult, then you can try to play psychiatrist, but until you do, stay out of it,” he said, bounding to his feet. “I’m taking a shower.”
He stormed away, leaving her on the couch feeling like an idiot for not dealing with her issues and trying to tackle his. He’d been so supportive of her and she wanted, no, she needed to find a way to do the same with him. She would start by opening one of the dairies.
Her fingers shook as she bent down to open the carry-on bag she’d left on the coffee table. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do this. I have to do this for me and Scott.
Danny sat in the chair, staring at her. “Oh, shut up! Nobody asked you a damned thing,” she said to the doll.