beat cop. Wasn’t he fantastic?” She squeezed my arm in warning, and I bobbed my head, doing my best to concur. I didn’t recall him at all. Not that I recalled much beyond my own name at that moment. I did my best to contribute to the conversation, though, especially since Sandy was making an effort to draw me in, and I didn’t want to disappoint.
In the end I managed to ask a few well-aimed questions that steered Mark to the subject of the pilot he was shooting for one of the alphabet-soup networks. He was anxious whether it would get picked up. I hung on his every word with all the air of rapt attention. Luckily it was something I did well even when I was three sheets to the wind.
We moved around the room in search of more booze, and somehow in the process we lost Sandy again. I was in no state to keep track of her. The buzz of the crowd melded with the one in my head. When I found myself pushed into a dark corner, I had only enough presence of mind to set my glass on the nearest horizontal surface. I found fingers scrabbling at the front of my jeans and a warm, alcohol-soaked tongue tackling mine. I went rigid for a second, but my initial shock was washed away by a surge of desire. I grabbed his ass with both hands, fingers digging in and pulled our hips together. He groaned into my mouth. Wherever he touched me, my skin tingled. He nipped along my neck, and he slipped his hands under my T-shirt. I rubbed my crotch against his and quietly moaned into his neck.
“Who’s Jez?” Mark asked, leaning back a fraction.
“What?” I said dizzily.
“You were saying his name. Never mind. I’ll be him for you.”
I pulled back, finally able to focus a little. I looked at Mark’s perfect teeth, perfect eyebrows, perfect cheekbones, and lust-filled eyes—that were just the wrong shade of blue. Shit.
Shit, shit, shit, shit.
He looked great, and he looked all wrong.
“I’m sorry.” I mumbled apologies and clumsily disentangled our limbs. “I can’t… Just can’t. Sorry.”
Mark looked put out and baffled, and even through the haze of my considerable buzz, I felt like an ass.
“The pilot will be a hit,” I blurted out. I didn’t know where that had come from, just that I wanted to say something to make it up to him, and at the moment I said it, I even believed it. I beat a hasty retreat out of the house.
* * *
The fresh air sobered me a little, but not nearly enough. When I moved my head, the lights left cool trails. I amused myself with that for a little while, till I realized I really couldn’t go back inside to find Sandy and pressure her to get me home. After some deliberation, I decided I could just wait for her in the car, but I couldn’t find it. Not only could I not find anything mint green anywhere, but the spot where I remembered we’d parked—as much as I could remember anything—was conspicuously empty. I commanded my two conscious brain cells to come up with a plan. Aha! The gorillas at the gate ! With alarm, I realized that said brain cells were attempting to channel Sam Spade.
I ambled down to the gate to question the “gorillas” about Sandy. The errant brain cells assured me that I looked and sounded just like Bogie in The Maltese Falcon.
“Now listen up”—I tilted up my imaginary hat—“because I won’t repeat myself. Did you see a dame in a small green convertible leave?”
The two guys, each as big as a door, exchanged a grin.
“Hot blonde in a Bug?” one of them asked.
“Yeah, that’s the one, buster. So where is she?”
“I don’t think I have to tell you anything,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. Judging from the snickering of the other gorilla, they were both having a good time at my expense.
“Now think again, and think fast!” I said at my menacing best. My delivery was slightly undermined by my slurring.
The heavy I’d been conversing with was having a hard time staying in character too. “She left hot on the tails of a Jag. Your