Kiss Kiss

Amelia drove home for a late lunch to find her powerful, attractive husband, Lexol, in the middle of a sensual massage. One that required no appointment. One that was occurring in the guest room. One that involved small rubbery appliances while a naked, Venusian goddess acted as his so-called masseuse.

The stranger’s hands were on her husband’s belly, and her lips were headed to the same area. Amelia stopped in the recessed doorway long enough to shed one tear and watch the woman kiss her husband’s stomach. And to watch her husband reach for the woman gently, luring her kiss to his mouth and her slinky form into his promising embrace.

After that crushing day, she went over all the footage from the security cameras to discover that this had been an on-going affair. Amelia divorced Lexol immediately. He got none of her wealth and lost his job after she posted the footage everywhere. She hoped it would have run him out of town, but it didn’t. It only ran his mistress out of town. As for Lexol, he had to start over again financially with a sour reputation.

Eventually Lexol begged Amelia to let him go back and live in the house that she had since abandoned. At her front door, a face full of stubble, he begged her. “Lease it to me. I just. I fell in love with that house and. I don’t have a lot of money, but if you bear with me then as soon as I get on my feet, I’ll start paying you twice what you’d normally charge.”

She said, “I’ll let you live there for six months free. Then you’ll pay me three times the rate each month for the next two years.”

“If I do that would you consider selling it to me?”

“Yes.” It was drizzling outside. He said, “Mind if I come in for a cup of coffee? It’s about to storm.”

She stared into his blue eyes. His perfectly tanned button nose seemed only to punctuate his privileged upbringing. His family had formed him into everything he was; specifically into someone who’d never go without. He didn’t have to have her mansion. He just wanted it.

No one had formed Amelia, on the other hand, into a person who’d never go without. She had to steal financial guidance from reluctant strangers her whole life to learn how not to be poor. Then when she applied that knowledge it made her surprisingly wealthy, since she had an unexpected knack for real estate. Nothing was handed to her. It was this very awareness that stared back at Lexol.

He reached through the crack in the door for her hand. She jerked it out of reach. “No. You can’t come in. I don’t even know why I’m letting you live in the mansion, you asshole. Goodbye!” She slammed the door as thunder rolled over the darkened day. Locked it. Leaned on it to whisper, “I wish you were a real man and not this fake thing. I wish your love was real.” Her tear was wrecked by a fingertip, smudged like it was never there. She frowned. “I’ll see you in six months.”

It was six months later when she got the letter that angered her into action. It read, “I want to thank you, Amelia, for the opportunity to live in the finest lease-home you own. I must offer you a thousand apologies for my being delinquent on the rent. I should be able to come up with the full first payment of eighteen thousand dollars by the end of the month. I’m willing to pay as steep a late fee as you decide to impose on me. I’ll deposit the funds directly into your personal account and notify you as soon as payment is made. Again, thank you for your continued patience and understanding.”

She tossed the letter onto her dining room table. Looked out the window. “You hide behind a manipulative letter like I’m some fool who you just met yesterday?” She threw the sheers closed, turned her back from the countryside view, and crossed her arms tightly. “You claim you can’t pay me? I know you better than that. I’m going to find out what’s really going on.”

The door alarm in her car dinged later that night outside the garage, the car’s overhead light being the only glow on the landscape at ten o’clock. She slammed herself sideways onto her seat with her legs dangling out, a tissue poking at her eyes and reddened nose. “I’m not your fool. Not for a second time!” Her dry pink lips swigged the neck of a narrow whiskey bottle. “You just don’t know.” She smiled. “How much I hate you because. Well.” She pulled her feet inside, shut the door. “Because I don’t know how much I hate you.” She looked at the bottle and swigged the brown juice, lowered her window and threw the empty bottle out onto her well-manicured lawn. “I don’t know!” She screamed in a shrill voice, “How much I hate you! But.” She uttered, “It must be a hell of a lot for me to be getting drunk over you.” She backed out and sped up.

She was exactly too drunk to drive. But she’d sober up sooner than she expected.

Meanwhile, her beautiful house on the other side of town was silent, all its outside lights were on, and the stone home glowed golden like a castle in a world beyond the shores. Of its many softly glowing rooms, most void of people and furnished with settees or grandfather clocks, there was one whose door was closed. Inside was chatter. Deep voices. Several pauses.                

Amelia rolled up to the gates slowly. Headlights off. She entered her property, immediately veering off the long driveway that led to the huge circle drive. “Four strange cars today? You entertain but you can’t pay me!” They were all black SUVs.

She drove over the lawn, parked the car behind the garden shed, walked to the house using every shadow she could find for cover.

Inside, five men were seated on mahogany chairs in a parlor. The largest of the men in suits stood. He wore a coarse beard and spoke with a coarser tongue, “What kind of shit is this, Lex? You said we could get the house for ten grand a month. Now listen, my bitches aren’t cheap. They’re young, fresh but experienced. You know who my clients are.” He stood up. “So suffice it to say that I could pay you five times what you’re asking!” His deep-set eyes were further darkened beneath a bulging brow line. He stood very still. The other men in the room looked at one another. Lexol looked up at the man from his seat, took a deep breath. The man said, “But. That wasn’t. The. Deal. Okay. I have a reputation for sticking to the goddamn deal!” He uttered on with his head tipped. “You feel me or what?”

Lexol said, “Listen. I understand if you won't pay fifteen, but…”

Amelia made it around the back of the house then up one side, where she walked with the top of her head just below the level of the high windows. One window was cracked open, and vape smoke wafted through. She stopped there, leaned back on the stone of the wall, listening.

Lexol was still talking. “…consider paying me for three months in advance so I don’t have to ask you for a loan.”

The man laughed. “Loan! You think I’m gonna give you a loan? You still owe me money for breaking my prize escort like she was a barbie doll. I lost money! You’re freaking lucky I’m doing business with you at all!”

Amile whispered to herself as she squinted at the ground, “Trying to turn my home into a brothel? This is not happening!” She went to the front door and beat on the doorbell, which went off over and over inside the mansion. “Open up you rotten fake! Open the door…”

The large man had his pistol aimed at Lex at this point. “You’d better find out who the hell it is. And it better not be no investigators!”

He stood with both arms up. “Okay. It’s fine, I’m sure.” He stepped over the wood floor like it was wet, or about to be. “I’ll get rid of them.”

The man pointed at the next largest man in the room, the one with the alert brown eyes. “Cirano! Go with him.”

“Going, Mr. James.” He drew his gun and followed Lexol for the next four minutes while the doorbell went off.

Lexol opened the door to a madwoman who lunged at his chest. She screamed, “You son of a bitch. I know what you’re up to!”

He shut the door fast, turned to the armed man. He said, “It’s just my crazy ex.”

“Well, get rid of her.”

She was beating on the door. “I’m gonna call the cops!”

Lexol said, “She’s drunk. I can smell it.”

“Well is she gonna call the cops!”

“Nah.”

They heard her dialing on her phone.

“Well, maybe,” Lexol shrugged.

Cirano tried to breech Lexol’s extended arm to get to the door, but Lexol stiffened it. Smiled. Whispered. “Hang tight a second. Trust me. Let her call the cops, then when they get here…”

The men in the parlor remained there after Cirano returned with the news.

“Shut the window,” Mr. James commanded. “We’ll just wait here.”

Moments later the police arrived on the circle drive. Amelia stood up from the steps as two officers approached her. “Someone call in a home invasion?”

“Yes! Me. My ex-husband’s in there right now.” She rattled on. “He’s trying to take over the place, turn it into a house of ill repute.” She paused as one officer raised his flashlight to see her eyes more clearly.

He said, “Madam, have you been drinking?”

“Of course I’ve been drinking! This jerk is my ex and he’s living in my house, won’t give me the rent.” She softened her tone now. “And by the way, you may know him. Lexol Ludvig. Prominent, crooked lawyer?”

He put his flashlight down, looked back at the other officer. “He wasn’t disbarred, was he?”

The officer said, “Ah. I don’t think so.”

Amelia’s eyes grew into raging green flaming orbs. Figuratively, of course. “What? Are you taking his side because he wasn’t disbarred?”

Lexol popped his smiling head out the front door. He asked, “Officers! Can I help you with something?”

“Yes.” The flashlight cop walked over. “This woman has called in with a complaint. Does she live here?”

“No. Certainly not.”

“This is my property!”

Lexol looked back, whispered, stepped out onto the porch. “I’m Lex Ludvig,” he shook the officer’s hand. “And that there. Is. My drunk ex-wife. I was hoping you’d show up and take her off to a drunk tank, let her sober up…”

He gave a hard nod. “Done.”

“What!” She squealed at them incessantly as the cops cuffed her and dragged her off.

That had been at eleven-thirty. Now it was three-thirty in the morning. She’d sobered up so was free to walk out of the local jailhouse.

After a taxi dropped her off outside the gate she returned to the house and tried to get inside. One door led to the kitchen; locked. Another led to the stairwell that led to the basement; alarm on. Another led to the master bedroom; locked plus alarm on. Finally, she marched over the lawn and past the pool to the control house that was situated way behind the guest house. It was always lit up inside with dim orange lights. She entered the code, barreled in, and went straight to the safe on the wall. She opened it in a furry. Amelia took two long pistols out. Checked their chambers. Fully loaded.

Then she stepped over to a thin metal door. Stepped back three feet as she swung it open with a pistol in both hands; it was a big door for an electric panel. She grinned through her grimace then established a grip on both pistols using her left hand. Now she read each entry above the switches; garage, west basement, east basement, ninth bedroom, upstairs east parlor, upstairs west parlor, pool room, grand bathroom, circle drive, pool, gazebo, south garden walk… Amelia found the switch that was labeled simply MAIN. With glee in her furious, maddened gaze she gripped the huge switch and toggled it with a hard snap to the left. Instantly everything went black and all hums fell silent.

The hammers of four pistols were heard being cocked almost at once up in that meeting room. The men were arguing about what had happened, flicking their lighters, desperately getting their phone lights on. “Don’t shine that in my eyes,” James griped. “Now lead the way. I want all of you to get out there. Find out if anyone’s here!” They were blocking the open door.

Lexol overshot the whole clog of them, squeezing through the door unnoticed. He hurried down the hallway as they all went the other way.

Moments later Cirano, who was wandering alone, came upon the control house with his phone light out. As he started to step inside, he heard a voice from the darkness outside. She said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

He lit her up with his phone and realized immediately that he was holding his pistol and that phone. She, on the other hand, was holding no phone and two pistols; one aimed at the head of Lexol – who was in her grip – and the other aimed straight at him. “Lower you phone,” she said.

He did. “Listen, lady. I don’t want any trouble.

“Shut up! Put the gun down!”

He did.

“Now come here.” He hesitated. “Come. Here.”

“Oh-oh-kay…” He moved slowly, arms up. She said, “Lex! Open the hole!”

He stepped out of her grip and pulled the lid of the vintage tornado shelter open. “Now come back, Lexol.”

He backed into her pistol-capped arms carefully, keeping his own arms high in the surrender position.

Amelia commanded Cirano, “Get down the ladder.” He peered at the dark void in the ground. “Do it!”

He obeyed. There he stayed.

One by one the men eventually wandered out to her, alone, and one by one she banished them to the hole. Then she said to Lexol, “Get down there with them.”

“You’re going to prison for a long time for doing this to me,” he complained as he climbed down the ladder.

She laughed. “Really. Using what evidence? The backup power goes only to the cameras in the main house. Idiot.”

He shut his mouth and vanished down the hole.

Finally, she lowered the heavy old lid as the men objected in squeaks, rumbles and every pitch in between, one even racing up the ladder to try and hold it open. She pressed down harder and harder but couldn’t overpower what were now three men pushing the door up. James yelled out, “You crazy bitch you can’t do this do us! Do you know who the hell I am!”

She had no choice but to lay on her belly over the big round door and curl her arm under it with pistol in hand, firing blind.

Someone plopped to the concrete ground below with a groan. Then a man jumped off the ladder cursing in five languages as the last man curled up on a rung and squealed a tiny prayer to the saints for help and safety.

Now their loud chaotic chatter was but muffled under the closed door, and she sat up to turn the hatch wheel to the right three full rotations, until she heard the bolt click in. (The original property owner, a mega-jerk, had designed the door to lock so he could catch accidental trespassers, apparently.)

After Amelia turned all the lights back on she entered the house and went over the security camera footage. On screen, the men were shown smiling and laughing in the foyer. Then they were shown going to the bar in the pool room. They each had a drink. James said, “So in a few moment’s we’ll retreat to sober environs, figure out how we can get Lexol to accommodate all twenty-five of our beautiful women of pleasure. Plus all one hundred and sixty of our customers.”

One of the men asked, “All at once, boss?”

“No, you idiot. Why would I wanna have all them in here all at one time, you moron. Some of them hate each other, you dumb-ass. You know that!”

“Oh yeah,” he chuckled softly.

After Amelia drove sober to the office of the district attorney at nine sharp that morning and revealed scenes from the night before, the five men were linked to a crime ring that had been using women from overseas to earn half of all its dirty profits. Gun dealings earned the other half.

They were all captured from the tornado pit, locked up in tacky orange suits.

Amelia had her house back. She put it on the market for a whopping seven million bucks. It sold like a glimmering hotcake five days later.

When she visited Lexol in jail the last thing she said was, “You weren’t disbarred the last time you hurt me. But. You’ll sure as hell be disbarred this time.” She smiled at his dull, thin face as he slouched in chains with nothing much to say for himself. “And the best part?” She leaned down into his face, flashed a key, and whispered, “See this? You will never touch one of my properties again.” He didn’t budge or blink as she touched the key to his thinned lips and said, “So kiss it.” She tapped it twice more to his lips as he watched her say, “Kiss. Kiss.”