High Heels in New York (7 page)

Finishing the bottle of wine, she still couldn’t get her mother’s wedding news out of her head.  She felt she was the one to blame for her mother’s decision of walking down the aisle again. Melissa was the one that kept pushing her mother to date. But that was because she didn’t want her to die alone in that big house. But never in her attempt to have her mother find a companion did she ever think she would go this far. She wasn’t supposed to see her mother get married before her and she wasn’t supposed to be sitting on the floor of her apartment, in
her wedding gown, ripping holes in her ex-fiancé’s clothes with his child inside her uterus.

Livid, Melissa grabbed her cell phone and dialed Jonathan’s cell phone. She wasn’t completely drunk so the call couldn’t constitute drunk dialing…right? It rang three times and went to voicemail. When she hea
rd the beep she wanted
to say, ‘You’re an asshole!’ and ‘I’m pregnant with your spawn you son of a bitch!’ but all she managed to say is a big fat nada.

With the insanity of the last twenty-four hours flitting around in the back of
her
mind, all Melissa wanted to do was call the one person who would calm her down, Angie. Instead, she
ran
to the bathroom to throw up.

4

Exactly one hundred and twenty minutes after Angie left Melissa in the hospital, she was in her luxury two bedroom uptown condo, wearing black lace lingerie, with black garter belts and a pair of black patent leather thigh high boots; the kind she only used during sex. There was no point in starting out naked. What would be the point in that? You had to give a man a chance to use his imagination so that his heart rate could rise along with the bulge in his pants. And that’s exactly what Angie’s intentions were when she decided she needed to see Carlos again.

After she stormed out of the hospital she decided that what she needed was stress relief and how better to do so than having another all night sex-a-thon. She knew that with the slightest thrust of his groin, Carlos could make her forget about everything and anything. And even though she was breaking her
own rule about seeing a guy more than once, she knew it was damn well worth it.

As Angie sauntered toward her dressing room, in her six inch heels, she reminded herself that this was the very last time, not just this week but the last time she would ever see him again. It had to be. He was too young for her and she didn’t want him to start getting comfortable with coming to her place or find comfort in being with her. Comfort is what ruins a good thing. And she wanted to end what they had on good terms. Living in a City like New York, you never knew when you would bump into people. She didn’t want to risk having an awkward moment in the future.

Reaching inside the small drawer in her dressing table, Angie pulled out a velvet drawstring bag. Inside, there was a small vile that she opened carefully, emptying a small amount of the white powdered substance unto a compact mirror. Within seconds, she could feel her heart racing. The adrenaline was pumping through her veins.
Almost better than sex
, she thought.

When the doorbell
rang
, she quickly
hid
everything back into the drawer.

“You’re late,” she tells Carlos when she opens her nine foot door.
“Seriously?”
He hadn’t even bothered to get out of his gym attire
.
Showing up like that was in no way, shape or form, sexy.

“Hi doll face
,” h
e said, moving in for a kiss. “I came as soon as you texted me.”

Angie
placed her hand on his chest, pushing him back. “I don’t fucking think so.” As if she’d make out with him with the door wide open so her neighbors could see
or with him smelling like sweaty ass
. “Go take a shower first.” She closed the door behind him pointing the way to the bathroom. This was not what she had planned. For the last two hours all she’s thought about was him thrusting open the door and rapturing her, not showing up all grimy.

Carlos didn’t seem to notice that she was upset. He casually walked into her bathroom as if he’d done it a hundred times before. “Wow, you got a really cool set up,” He yelled out to her.

“
Uhuh
,” Angie
said, not really
paying attention. She was too busy pouring herself a glass of red wine.

“How do you turn this thing on?”

“Seriously?”
Angie
said loudly
.
Grudgingly walking to the bathroom, she
proceeded to show Carlos exactly how to turn on her shower. It was a
Rohl
system, not rocket science. She turned a brass handle to the right and the six jet stream shower sauna turned on. With the flick of another switch, two more jet streams begin spitting out hot water as well.
Long gone were the times she had to take a shower in a Motel.

“H
oly shit,” h
e said, amazed. “You must really love your showers.”

“You have no idea,” Angie said, handing him a white towel from the linen closet and then stepping out.

“You’re not going to join me?” He
asked
, grinning at her
in complete nudity
.

She thought about it for a second and then decided
even though she pictured having sex with him under the hot water,
she really didn’t need to see him lathering his balls and rinsing his ass. It was a visual that would ruin the fantasy in her head. “No. You go ahead. I’ll wait for you in the bedroom.”

Fifteen minutes later, Carlos finally exited the bathroom wearing absolutely nothing. His golden skin was glistening from the tiny water beads still clinging to him. Upon seeing him, Angie quickly forgave him for earlier. Lying on her bed, she starred at the sculpted muscles on his body as he walked towards her.  When he finally reached her, he softly kissed her on her lips. She felt a tingling between her thighs. She had never been with a man who made her feel so turned on from just a kiss. He stimulated her senses the way no other man had ever done. As she lay down on the bed with him, she reminded herself that no matter how good he made her feel, she would not see him again. She just couldn’t trust herself with him otherwise.

Three orgasms later, Angie was still in bed listening to the twenty three year old hunk of a man snoring. She couldn’t believe that he had the nerve to fall asleep after sex. Should she wake him? Looking at her alarm clock she felt bad wanting to send him home at two o’clock in the morning but she couldn’t have him sleep over. That was a huge no-no. If she let him sleep over, he would think it was okay and then he would want to sleep over all the time. Plus, what the hell were they going to talk about in the morning?
Cartoons and video games?
Nope. It just wasn’t going to work.

She nudged him real hard. He didn’t budge. So, she placed the bottom of her foot against his muscular thigh and pushed him off the bed. There was a loud thud when he hit the ground.
“Oh my!
Are you okay?”

“
Wha
..what
happened?” He said, stunned by the impact.

“I don’t know. I guess you’re not used to sleeping on my bed.” She couldn’t tell him she’d pushed him. “Well, since you’re up….”

#

The next morning, Angie looked at the missed calls on her cell phone. There were two from Carlos and one from Melissa.
Neither were people she cared to talk to. Sighing, she put the cell phone away and knocked on a door with a PRIVATE sign in the center of it.

“It’s open,” a deep guttural male voice yelled out.

Angie opened the door slowly. The small, dark office looked like a
n episode of
CSI. There was a mess everywhere she looked. An overflowing bookcase took up the entire space alongside the right wall. There were piles of paper on either side of the desk where the man was sitting that Angie guessed they were at least two feet tall. She almost turned around and walked out. But she had already paid this man a thousand dollars advance so she walked inside. “Hi. I’m Angie. I called you a week ago?”

“Oh, yeah,” the man said, as the smoke from his cigarette filled the air. “Come on in. I was just looking at your case file.”

Angie closed the door behind her and sat down on the old wooden chair in front of his desk.  She’d spent months deciding whether or not she was going to go through with hiring a private investigator to find her family. With the holidays looming near she felt the timing couldn’t have been better. But she was nervous about the news that Cohen said he had for her. What if there was no one left in her family and
she would be alone, forever
or worse. What if he had found someone and they didn’t want to meet her? The anticipation was killing her. “What did you find?”

“Well
sweet heart
,
imma
get to the point,” h
e said, sucking on the cancer stick and blowing a puff of smoke into the air again. “You didn’t hire me to tell you pretty stories.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Your mother is dead. She died five years ago. Here’s the addr
ess of cemetery she’s buried in,” h
e said.

Angie took the piece of paper he was holding out for her and gripped it tightly. Died? And no one told her? Then again, who would? The address
of the cemetery
he had written down was located in Michigan. Of all the damn boring and unappealing places her mother had to die, she chose Michigan. Angie wasn’t about to break down, not now and not in front of a stranger.
“Anything else?”

“I tell you,
that’s
the way to be. So you got bad news. So what right?” He said, putting out his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray, “Just get back in there and keep on trooping. If more people were like you and me, there wouldn’t be a need for sappy cards.”

“What else Mr. Cohen,” Angie demanded. She didn’t have time or the energy to sit there and listen to him babble on.
It has already cost her a lot of money just to hear her mother died. She wanted something more tangible.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, opening a drawer in the desk.
“
Here you go.” He handed her something else. This time it was a file. “You have a sister that lives right here in Manhattan.”

“What?” She couldn’t believe what he had just told her.
A sister?
Angie opened the file. The first picture
was
of a beautiful young woman dressed in a couture outfit, stepping inside a limo. Her face is not clearly visible in that picture so she moves on
to the next
. The next
one
shows the lady wearing the same outfit
except this time she’s
exiting the limo
and there is a guy with unreasonably poor choice in clothing.
Well, at least he has good taste in shoes
, Angie thought. As she continued looking at the picture it dawned on her who the woman in the picture actually was.
Angie was at a loss for words. “Are you sure this is my sister?” She asked Cohen.

“Lady, this is what I get paid to do. My reputation depends on getting accurate information,” Cohen said.

“Yes or no!”
Angie screamed at him.

“She’s your sister alright. I’ve confirmed all the information. There’s some more stuff in there but I figure you’ll get to it on your own time.” He pushed back his chair and stared at Angie, “You’re one high strung bitch. You know that?”

Angie stands, reaching inside her purse and proceeded to throw an envelope full of cash on his desk. “This bitch just kept
you in bu
siness for the rest of the year,” s
he said, walking out and slamming the door behind her.

Strung out?
Her?
How dare
him
! Angie tucked the file under arm and walked down the flight of stairs leading to the exit.  Once she stepped outside and onto the sidewalk, she took a deep breath and tried hard not to explode. How dare he call her strung out? She didn’t even resemble a drug addict. Or did she? Struggling not to drop the files, she took a compact mirror out of her purse and checked her reflection. She didn’t just look tired, her hair looked scraggly and her skin was blotchy as if it had seen too much sun. Sadly, she put the mirror back in her purse and procee
ded to call her plastic surgeon.

#

A few hours later, without warning, Angie stormed into her managers’ office and sat down on one of the burgundy leather Queen Anne chairs in front of his desk without even saying hello. “Don’t say one word Char
les. I don’t want to hear it,” s
he said.

Charles Monroe sat at his desk, carefully eyeing Angie as she sat down. It wasn’t like her to show up so early in his office. Curiosity was getting the better of him. “What is it Angie?”