Chapter Two – Cola Wars

By 2 AM Circe and John had done the whole fresh lobster and dancing to a Maruichi band thing so they stumbled back to their room. Circe was having a great time but she was beginning to worry about how much coke John was doing.

John loved his cocaine almost as much as Circe did. She had begun sleeping with him a year ago because he seemed to have an endless supply of blow. She didn’t much care for him but she liked what he could provide. Anyway, after a few blasts she was ready for a good roll in the hay and he was that; or had been before the coke got so out of hand.

Rudy wasn’t into drugs and certainly wouldn’t have approved had he known how much coke she was doing these days. He smoked a little weed from time to time, but that was about it, though she’d heard all of the coke stories from his short lived NBA career.

Good old Rudy… He treated her well enough but what a square he was. Sometimes she wondered if his NBA stories were true. It was hard to imagine Mr. Green Jeans as the out of control party animal he was supposed to have been in those days.

John dumped more coke onto his little mirror and chopped at it furiously with his razor blade, eventually drawing two healthy lines and handing it to her. “Here, pick your line.” She glanced at John and was taken aback by the wild look in his eyes.

“John, don’t you think we’ve had enough for tonight?”

“Gees woman, when did you become such a nag? You want some or not? ‘Cause if you don’t I can do both lines myself.”

She really didn’t need any more but she sure didn’t want John to do both lines. He was already getting out of hand. She took the mirror and leaned over with the rolled up dollar bill against her nose and snorted half a line up each tender nostril before handed the mirror back to John. He did his in one hearty snort.

“Whoa!” he shouted. “That’s what I’m talking about. Now get your clothes off and let’s do it.”

“You really know how to woo a woman, John.” Without warning he slapped her hard across the cheek.

“I’m sick of your lip woman; now get your clothes off.”

Circe quickly complied and before she knew it John’s sweating body was smothering her. He stunk of sweat and tequila and smoke. The drugs and booze and the two days since he’d last slept had taken their toll on him and he was unable to perform. He rolled over and passed out. Thank God for small favors.

She went into the bathroom and sat alone in the darkness, shaking and fighting off the overwhelming depression that always came on the down side when the coke wore off.
Damn him anyway. Why did he always have to get so out of control?

She thought again about Rudy, poor dumb Rudy. Surely he’d gotten her phone message by now and he was probably taking it hard. Poor sap probably had no idea it was coming. Where did he think she was all those nights? Playing Bingo at church? Still, she couldn’t help feeling a little bad for him. He was the only man she’d ever been involved with who hadn’t abused her in some way or another. So big deal, give the boy a friggin’ medal.

She hadn’t had much of a childhood. She’d lost her virginity at eleven when her brother and his best friend had taken turns with her. She hadn’t wanted to do it but they made it clear that they were going to whether she cooperated or not. She cooperated and hated the fact that, on some level, she liked it. Afterward she felt dirty and took a long shower, scrubbing herself until the water ran cold but she couldn’t get clean.

It wasn’t long before her brother was sneaking into her room at night on a regular basis. So had begun the love/hate relationship she’d had with sex ever since.

Soon enough she realized that men would do almost anything to get a hold of her deceptively innocent looking body. She may have been introduced to sex as the helpless victim but she quickly turned the tables.

She loved sex and she especially loved the power it gave her even if she hated herself and her partner afterward. Thanks to the way she’d learned to manipulate men, she had never had to work an honest day in her life. At 14 she dropped out of school and she’d lived off one man or another ever since, pilfering whatever she could along the way.

She was prone to violent temper tantrums and they proved useful for driving the men away, once she was done with them, while justifying her hatred of the jerks. It was a vicious, self-fulfilling circle. Men were for satisfying her urges and to bleed for whatever she could get from them. It was her personal mission to make them all pay, one man at a time, for being so useless as a gender.

She flipped the light on and washed her face in cold water, trying not to look at her gaunt, pale face in the mirror. Coke was beginning to rob her of her looks, her most precious asset, and she was doing her best to ignore that fact.

She climbed back in bed next to John’s snoring corpse. Coke or no coke, she’d be out of here right now if it weren’t for John’s plan. He’d devised a scheme that, in their drug-deluded minds, they were certain would make them both rich. She loved the thought of the additional power over men that the money would afford. That thought brought a smile to her face that almost made her forget how much her cheek burned where she’d been slapped.

© 2008. David Heiniger. All Right Reserved.