“Good morning, Mr. Finklestein. Hope you slept well. I know I sure did.”
She almost purred.
He opened his mouth to
tell her what happened after they’d made love, but something stopped him.
In the bright morning light, last night’s adventures seemed surreal. What
if it was all a dream? He’d always been told he had a vivid imagination.
“You fell asleep right
afterwards,” he remarked instead, closing his eyes with a satisfied sigh
as she worked her magic on him.
But what if last night
really happened? a
little voice whispered.
What if you screw each other again, and you end up taking off? What if—
A loud, irritating
buzzing came from her side of the bed. Anger flashed across her face, and
she stopped what she was doing.
“Shit!”
He jerked upright.
“What? What is it?”
A second later, he heard
the distinct sound of a door being opened in the other room.
April hurried out of bed
and went over to close her bedroom door, but not before a voice came from
the living room.
“Hey, April! Sorry if I
woke you!”
“That’s okay, Becky.
You’re home early.”
“Yeah, well, the
hospital was overstaffed, so they let a few of us go home before the end
of our shift. I’m glad I got tapped. I’m so tired. I’m going to get a bath
and hit the sack for a couple of hours, so don’t mind me.”
Wally was aware of April
using her body to block the view inside her bedroom. Once her roommate
vanished inside her own bedroom, she closed the door.
“Sorry, Wally. You’re
gonna hafta leave now,” she whispered.
He glanced down at his
johnson that had nearly risen to full attention and nodded. “It’s okay,”
he assured her. “What was that buzzing noise?”
“It’s the alarm we had
put on the front door. It buzzes whenever someone comes in.”
“On your front door?” He
immediately thought of the patio door.
She shrugged as she
pulled on a silk bathrobe that had been hanging from a hook behind the
door. “It makes us feel safer. Gives us time to call 9-1-1.”
“What about the patio
doors? Or the windows?”
“We’d discussed it, and
decided not to include them. Damn package was expensive enough as it was
without that added cost. Besides…” She snickered. “You’d have to be pretty
damn desperate to climb over that privacy fence.”
He turned his body to
sit on the side of the bed and hoped she didn’t notice his skinned knees.
He quickly pulled on his pants and shoes, and grabbed his shirt as April
checked the hall to see if the coast was clear.
“Come on. She’s in the
shower.”
Snatching up his cell
phone, he stuffed it into his pocket and followed her into the living
room. They shared a deep but too short kiss.
“Call me,” April
whispered as she pulled away.
He grinned. “I might
even do more than that.”
She brightened, gave him
another quick peck on the mouth, and held the door open as he slipped out.
Wally hurried to his
car. He felt good. In fact, he felt marvelous, but he also realized it
wasn’t the overwhelming kind that had flooded his system last night.
He checked the clock
when he got under the steering wheel. 6:18 a.m. Didn’t The Donut Palace
open at six? “Since today’s Saturday, and I don’t have to go to work, I
think I’ll celebrate last night with an apple fritter and a cup of
coffee.”
He’d barely sat down at
a table after receiving his order when his phone went off, but it wasn’t a
phone call. It was his message to himself, reminding him about lunch with
his father, and to contact Dwight.
“Hey! There it is again!
Turn up the sound, would ‘ja, please?” a customer shouted from the other
side of the shop.
Wally turned around in
his seat to see what the guy was talking about when he caught sight of the
TV mounted on the wall in the corner. His jaw dropped to see a distant,
grainy image of himself. He continued to stare at the sight of him
extracting himself from inside the car the robbers had tried to take off
in as the two guys began running for the empty lot.
“Can you believe it? We
got us another superhero!” someone remarked. Several cheered.
“Why is he naked?” a
woman asked loudly.
“Whaddaya think he calls
himself? In-the-Buffman?” a man responded.
“How about Buttman?” the
woman at the next table countered, earning several snickers. |