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Her wet, shiny, red lips went to work.
"It's different when I kiss women," she said to his seemingly overeager eyes. "Softer. Fuller. And the nipples ..."
She knew the game; men loved this story, and they had a strange need to feel emasculated by their fear of the deep mystery of women. Masochists. The man peppered her with the kind of tittering questions kids in frat houses use when they titter to drunk sorority sisters.
"Is it better?”
“Well," she put on with a purr, "sometimes."
"You ever had a threesome?"
"What do you think?"
"You see anyone here you'd do?"
"Sure. There's always someone. That's the point."
"What would you do?"
"Oh, I dunno," her finger rolled coyly around the rim of her glass. "Maybe escape to the ladies' room for a minute."
"Yeah?"
"Then I’d grab her hair and …" Mary half-heartedly pulled two hands toward her crotch.
Her eyes bounced around the room. She was uninspired. This was just for kicks; to let the guy think there was a remote possibility of his dream-come-true orgy.
Finally, she decided on the guy who had offered her coke earlier. As she looked into the mirror behind the bar, she wondered how long she would last.
She sighed, still trying to impress the idiot in front of her. “It’s not even the sex, it’s the danger that turns me on.”
Another man placed his hand on her shoulder.
She looked at him in the mirror.
"Your place?" she mouthed to him, before blowing the idiot a kiss.
Briggs looked at her with fire in his eyes, and nodding, indulged Mary with a half-smile.
***
Mary finished the second line, pinched her nose and held up the mirror to the man standing behind her. Drugs and sex—this was her wet work.
"Finished, sweetheart?"
"For now, lover. Now, what business did you say ..."
Mary suddenly felt slow and blurry, like in a dream. She had done plenty of coke before, but now her eyelids were falling and she could barely understand the words being whispered in her ear by the man from the bar, of whom she knew only vague details.
Just before she lost consciousness, as she was taught, she played a small game with herself to try and figure out—or remember later on—where she was and whom she was with. He was a short, black-haired man with a graying beard and ridiculous shoes. She met him at Sweet and Vicious down on Spring Street in NoLiTa. His name had something to do with ... In her last moment of light she slurred, "Just like baseball."
She never felt the dull thud on the back of her head as she fell onto the floor.
In her sprawl, Mary's skirt bunched up over her hips, revealing a sleek figure and the shapely curve that marked the bottom of her ass. Briggs, dressed in a leather coat and Italian shirt, stood over her, sweating, full of hunger and lust.
***
Briggs bent over, licked the trickle of blood that flowed out of her ear, and felt the warm iron taste in his mouth. He liked that other people’s blood always tasted different than his own. He also liked that she wasn't talking.
Briggs stood up, straddled Mary's horizontal body, spitting blood. He pulled out an antique straight-edged razor from the inside pocket of his jacket and began to slice off her shirt. As he sliced the cuffs, he noticed a small glimmering object in her hand. It looked like a transmitter.
At that second, he heard a rumble of boots bounding up the stairs. They were arriving early. Instantly, Briggs did what he had been trained to do. He shattered the window of the bathroom, climbed out, and swung himself over to a phone line that sagged between two seven-story buildings. He quickly crossed the line and grabbed hold of the fire escape on the adjacent building.
He pulled himself onto the metal grating and climbed toward the roof. He turned around just long enough to spy a man in his bathroom tending to the woman he left on the floor. Another man examined the broken window and looked toward the ground. With that small opening, Briggs leaped from the thin ladder, catapulted himself onto the roof, and crouched behind the ledge. Then, crawling along the gravel, he made his way to the other side of the building. He then climbed down the fire escape, walked out of the alley, and disappeared into the night.
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