Mr. Hooligan (5 page)

His house was a concrete tin-roofed bungalow, two bedrooms, a porch out back and a covered one in front, where he always kept a light burning for safety, and the comfort of never having to come home to darkness. He strived to make his life as routine as possible—difficult considering he made much of his money in ways that were anything but routine.

His custom was to park the pickup out front. Unlatch the rickety wooden gate and stroll up the seashell path, maybe stopping at the carport to check the van with
DUNCAN
’
S TOURS
painted on the side, see if the windows were rolled up, doors locked. But the part of it he was tired of—coming home to an empty house. Sometimes, just seeing his son’s name on the van gave him a lift; other times it was only painted lettering. For the past year, however, he’d had an American neighbor next door whose attractiveness was worth every second of all the time he spent admiring her.

He stood in the center of his yard and stared up at her house. Lights were on in two rooms, windows open. He edged toward the fence. Smelled cooking. Onions sautéing, meat. Heard her voice. High-pitched singing. Through the tall living room window he could see the ceiling fan whirring, a high shelf of photographs, the walls. Couldn’t see her, though, and he was in need of a glimpse.

When she moved in last year, he’d introduced himself, helped carry boxes up, and from that day, he’d been checking her out. His neighbor across the street had been as well—Bill Rivero had seen him helping and later that week said, “Boy, you don’t play. You’re Mr. Swift,” and winked.

She was a tight, muscular woman, thirty-six, pale skin, red hair, features untypical in Belize. She liked snug jeans and they never disappointed her, baseball caps sometimes. She ran four mornings a week, seven-thirtyish, and looked surprisingly softer, leaner, and girlish in running shorts.

Clearly, Riley had a thing for her.

He saw her glide past the window. Long T-shirt, bare legs. Was her hair damp? It looked damp. He listened to frogs bleating in the empty lot behind his house, crickets cheeping. A light came on in another room and he followed her, staying close to the fence, going into his backyard.

There—another glimpse. She was folding clothes, stacking a high shelf in a bedroom closet … man, those legs. He had the perfect angle, perfect view with the lights on … and yeah, her hair was wet. Like she’d just stepped out of the shower. She turned around and he ducked, holding his breath, feeling stupid. No way she could’ve seen him, she in a lighted room and him down here in the dark.

He felt self-conscious, and naughty. His other neighbor’s windows were closed, Bill Rivero was too far across the street to see him, and the house behind hers, well, if someone there looked out, they might see him, but it was dinnertime, plus who’d think anything wrong about a man standing in his own backyard?

Riley was massively turned on right now, and he did mean massively as in uncomfortably tight jeans. He thought about it, then he put a hand on the post of the chain-link fence and launched himself over, dropping low into the grass on her side.

He remained still. Heard her singing. Sounded like … something by Prince?

“… don’t have to be rich to be my girl…”

Riley passed a palm over his face and thought, Okay, let me reconsider this, and didn’t, stepping over to her back stairs, where he rested a hand on the railing, one foot on the bottom step, looking up. Light slanted onto her back porch through a screen door.

He sat on a step, listening to her voice going off-key.
“Women, not girls, rule my world, I said they rule my world,”
the clank of a spoon against a pot. He imagined her, back and forth between the fridge and the stove, what she was wearing under that T-shirt, or not wearing. Jesus, he had to take a look.

He stood up, counted one, two, three and bounded up the stairs, two at a time, and braked right beside the screen door, flattened his back against the wall. He looked over at his house, the weedy lot behind it, at the square of light from the other neighbor’s window. He was satisfied there was no one watching this. Inch by inch, he pushed his head around and peeked in.

She was in the kitchen, shaking a bottle of spices into a small pot bubbling on the stove. Bopping her head, earbuds plugged in, wire leading to an iPod clipped to the hem of the T-shirt. She screwed the lid on, turned to put the bottle on the counter, and Riley pulled his head back.

His heart was thudding. Wow—she was so damned good-looking. No makeup, wet stringy hair, baggy T-shirt, but this was what was so cool—the plainness made her prominent jaw and blue eyes and milky white skin more striking. He poked his head around for another moment of appreciation.

She was dancing now, twirling in the middle of the tiled kitchen, pivoting on the ball of one foot, eyes closed, head thrown back. Clapping now, swinging her hips in that loose T-shirt that reached to the middle of tight runner’s legs.

God
damn,
Riley was breathing hard. He felt like Harvey, like some slack-jawed ogler.

She did a move where she struck a pose, hands on chest, then flung her hair and tossed her arms out into a series of serpentine gestures, hips rocking, toes pointed, and calves taut. Riley put a hand to his heart and thought, Oh, my, god.

He drew back. Without a second’s doubt, he removed his shirt and dropped it there on the porch. His left hand roamed his chest, traveled down to his navel, unsnapped his jeans, unzipped. Reached in and … man, oh, man.…

What the hell was he doing? Touching himself, thinking, I could get arrested for this. Thinking, I don’t give a shit, no one can see me.… He was rock hard, breaths coming shallow.

Clapping—she was clapping again. When he pushed his head around, she was facing him, dancing into the kitchen, eyes directly on the door, and he froze.

But it was like she couldn’t see him even though she had looked straight at him. He stepped back, knowing he’d just been caught and that she did not care, the woman was teasing him, pretending to be oblivious, as she enticed him further. Tantalized him.

He pulled his Levi’s down and it sounded
thock
when it hit the floor, and he remembered the engagement ring in his pocket. But it was in a box, well protected. It would survive.

He tugged off his briefs and flipped it onto the pile and stood there naked and stiff and pulsing. He felt wicked daring and crazy and jungle virile. The air licked at his backside, and he really liked that.

She was singing a different song, or more like speaking, about rain on the barn roof and the horses wondering who you are and about thunder and lightning and how you feel like a movie star. He stood still as she launched into the chorus.
“Raspberry beret…”

Her voice moving away. The air thick with delicious cooking, his head reeling, he made up his mind to do it. He reached over and finger-hooked the door handle gently. The door opened with a creak of the springs.

He stepped into the kitchen, the tile cool under his feet. She danced into the living room, her back to him, swaying those hips. There was a leather sofa on one side, a love seat on the other, and he wondered on which one he’d do it—or maybe right there on the rug she was dancing on.

If you’re going to act crazy, might as well act crazy all the way. He wanted her to turn around, see him naked and solid under the kitchen light, before he made his move.

Throwing her arms out, she twirled and stopped. A hand flew up to her mouth and she let out a scream. “Oh my god!”

He charged, she put out her hands but he ducked under and tackled her around the waist and lifted her easy, slinging her over a shoulder, her body so soft and light. She squirmed and shrieked with laughter and started spanking his butt. “You’re crazy, Riley, you’re so”—spank, spank—“totally crazy,”—spank, spank, spank—kicking her legs and laughing hysterically.

He said, “You like that? Didn’t expect that, did you?” He thought better of the sofa and moved toward her bedroom. She was pinching his butt and he couldn’t stop laughing, rushing and tottering with her to the room. He stumbled. “Oooh, my back, I think I hurt my back.”

She said, “Don’t you
dare
drop me,” and whaled away at his ass, giggling.

He heaved her onto the bed and pounded his chest like a gorilla and roared as she rolled around laughing uncontrollably, tears in her eyes. He raised his arms and executed a short dive onto the bed, landing on elbows and knees, straddling her. “You’re trapped now, baby, nowhere to go but to the land of extreme pleasure,” and he leaned in for a deep, long kiss full of giggling.

*   *   *

He lay on the damp sheets and languidly took in the room in the light leaking through the half-open bathroom door. Wood-framed photos decorated the walls—a kayaker bobbing on the blue-green near the barrier reef; the ruins of the Maya temple at Xunantunich at sunset; Riley and his five-year-old son standing on rocks, grinning in the mist of the Thousand Foot Falls at Mountain Pine Ridge—all of them photos Candice had taken. And one snapshot on the dresser of her fiancé, Albert, who had died in a car crash years ago. To honor him, she said. Riley respected that.

She said from the tub, over the noise of the faucet, “Baby, can you put the mince on simmer for me?”

Passing the bathroom door, he said, “Girly-girl, you wore me out proper, I can hardly walk.” In the kitchen, he turned the stove to simmer and sniffed the pot. Ground meat, onions, peppers, and carrots swimming in a curried stew. In a pan cooling off, thin-sliced potatoes, crisped in a light coating of olive oil and a sprinkle of kosher salt. The sight made him happy and ready for the big question. He retrieved his clothes from the porch and padded back into the bedroom with a quickening heart.

She was toweling off in the bathroom, smiling at him occasionally in the mirror. He stepped out of view and pincered the little box out of his jeans, removed the ring and searched for the best place to put it.

She came out and dropped the towel, a message that she just might be in the mood for more.

He said, “Heavens, you’re too sexy for your own good.”

“Oh yeah?” She teased him with a pose, hip jutting to the left.

Her skin was flawless in that light. Down there, he was rising again. He said, huskily, “Walk across the room.”

“Like this?” and she sashayed, snapped her chin in line with a shoulder, with attitude. Pivoted and swaggered back.

He said, “I think you dropped something, over there. No … by the closet,” and admired her shapely apple cheeks, which she pointed his way.

Legs together she bent forward from the waist perfectly and said, “Oh where but where could it be? I don’t see anything here,” in a girly voice. Playing with him. She straightened, dropped her arms on the dresser, stuck her rear out and said, “I believe I shall just have to look again,” and Riley laughed, leaping onto the bed.

On his knees, he said, “Looking at you makes me want to growl.”

She spun around, shoved her hips to the left—bam—took a couple of steps, shoved to the right—bam—and bent over again, offering a side view, the flat of her thighs, breasts, long damp red hair tousled over a shoulder. “Is it here, you think?”

He was quiet, waiting.

She straightened, a hand over her mouth. She stared at the ring she was holding. “Riley…?” She looked at him. “Riley?”

For days he had planned what to say and now the moment had arrived, he was mute. So he grinned. “Uhmmm … well, yeah…”

She came to him, and they hugged, then she stepped back and examined the diamond. She slipped it on her ring finger, daintily.

He felt awkward and nervous and just couldn’t wait any longer, so he said, “I’m ready for loving,” but that wasn’t what he wanted to say, and when she smiled he played it up, posing with fists on hips, Superman now. “Riley James, the indefatigable lover.”

She frowned. “No, say it with style. Say lov
ah
.”

“The indefatigable lov
ah.
”

“Yeah, like that.”

“Come to me, my fairy sweet.”

She did, sneaking a peek at the ring. They embraced hard, and he wrestled her to the sheets, tasting her mouth, tartish wine, her nipples, salty with dried perspiration, her neck. Her legs parted for him, and he covered her with his body, their abdomens barely touching, until he moved in, hoping for the right answer.

CHAPTER FIVE

Riley awoke in his own bedroom with the sun in his eyes, nightstand lamp burning. His reading glasses were perched crookedly on his nose, his worn paperback of the
Tao Te Ching
open on his chest. He yawned, stretched, and reseated the glasses. Watched the haze of dust in the sunrays, trying to remember what time he’d left Candice’s house to go to the bar, then what time he’d left the bar. After a while, he took up the book and read half a page with half his attention and put the book down.

He got out of bed, rolled his neck and bent backward, joints cracking and popping nicely. He sat on his kneeling meditation bench, and when he was ready, relaxed, he watched his breath rise and fall. After a few minutes, his attention slackened and he started scratching his arm, and he gave up on the sitting.