Free Kingston Noir by Colin Channer Page A

the distance. The breeze was just as hot as it was downstairs but had more flutter. Toy cars zigzagged ten floors below, the sound of them stretching and shortening, fading and growing, then melting away in waves.
    What can I get you? he said when they were back inside. The room had a pair of matching couches. The flat screen on the wall was on, but silent. Soccer. She stood in front of it, watching but not really seeing, marking time, with drinks.
    Suddenly his breath was warm on her neck. Was this even what she wanted? She turned into him. Now they were too close. His long, mole-sprinkled face was narrow and kind. He reminded her of a horse. She stepped away. What could he get her? What did she want? A bath, she said.
    And it surprised her to hear her need jump out so fierce in front of this man she’d met less than an hour before.
    A bath coming up, he said, and disappeared.
    Inside the bedroom there was a suitcase open on the bed and she rummaged through it quickly without disturbing the neatly folded trousers, the striped shirts with stiff collars, his white briefs. She couldn’t tell if he was going or coming. Back in the living room, she switched the channel to tennis. Serena was playing Wimbledon. She turned it off and poured herself a glass of water.
    She still hadn’t decided yet if she would sleep with him. She had not been with anyone, man or woman, in years. He wasn’t exactly her type though she had no earthly idea what that was anymore. For a minute, her ex-husband had been her type, and then the woman she’d lived with for seven years before had been her type. She couldn’t say that about the transients in between … and this man now … he didn’t look like he could hold her, he didn’t look strong, but then again she could relax with him. Wasn’t easy to relax after six years. Would’ve been twenty without early release. But she wanted to learn how to rest again and start her life over.
    The man called out to her, and as she approached the bathroom she could see that he had turned out the lights and arranged candles in a row on the edge of the tub. Their flames gave off a soft moon glow. The water was perfumed with ylangylang and scattered with rose petals he’d gotten from the bouquet on the nightstand.
    He did not hover. He was respectful. He stepped out while she undressed and returned only after she had slipped in. He was down to his boxers and his dick inside them was hard, but his movements over her body were languid. He sponged her back and her neck and her breasts and her clavicles. He sponged her feet; he sponged her polished toes. There was desire in his touch, patience in his movements. But he asked nothing of her. For this she was grateful. Right now she only wanted care and she liked that he could sense this. She closed her eyes. She let her face soften.
    She must’ve dozed off, for when she woke again she was naked in his bed under his sheets and she could hear him snoring on the couch in the living room. She put a hand to her eyes. The sun was bright through the half-turned blinds.
    She let herself out without looking at him. She left him as a sound.
    Mita returned to her room to find a plastic bag wrapped in duct tape on the chair near the window. She edged up to it, a tiny smile breaking the corners of her lips. So, things were working then, she thought. The boy had come through. She sat on the bed in her black dress from the night before and turned the package over slowly.
    It was small, less than half a pound, and flat … no roundness or grooves, so no barrel. She imagined a semiautomatic. Something that could fit easily in her purse, like the one she used to take with her to work at the lot.
    It was wrapped in a dense wad of tape and plastic and newspaper. It took forever to tear through the layers.
    That fucker! she cried when all the unwrapping was done. The metal chinked the concrete wall and thunked on the carpet when she flung it.
    An L-joint piece of copper pipe.
    She