A new chapter is posted every Monday morning. If you want to start at the beginning, check out chapter one.
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Chapter two: Vince’s Houseguest
“Won’t you come in?” said Vince, still doing his best to sound like his long-ago turn as Nick Caraway in Scorcese’s “Gatsby.” The girl came in, she always did. Vince watched her from behind as she put the bags down in the kitchen. Nice ass, he thought. Once upon a time he had thought it chivalrous to help them with carry the stuff in, but his back had been acting up, and the last thing he wanted to do was throw it out again. Not today. Besides, it was cooler this way. “Lay back and let her do the work, bro” – this was how Johnny would have wanted it.
The girl was almost done now – pulling cans and packages from the bags until Vince’s nearly bare freezer and cupboards were again stocked in neat rows with all his favorites. A strip steak, flown in overnight from his beloved New York, materialized from one of the bags. “Later,” he told it with his eyes. “Just you and me.”
She finished putting the stuff away, and turned to face him. They both knew what was coming now. Vince looked at her face – the hair, dark, short but not too short, framing an unblemished face that hadn’t aged a day since high school. She was perfect. They were always perfect.
Was it the same girl? Vince realized with a start that he didn’t know. She certainly seemed to know what he liked, but then Vince supposed that was still common knowledge out there in the 310 and 323, just as it had always been. The better parts of the 818, too. And he’d had a 562 once. Didn’t know where 562 was then, still didn’t now, but he’d wanted to add it to his list. Turtle hooked him up at some sneaker thing. Anyway, she looked like the girl from last week. She was dressed the same, in a little skirt that showed just enough leg, and a polo shirt with two buttons open and some kind of logo Vince didn’t recognize over her left tit. She needed some real clothes – maybe he could hook it up, take her to Sunset Plaza and drop the Black card, like old times. They would still know him. Wouldn’t they?
It didn’t matter now because the clothes were in a pile on the floor and she was stark naked on the bed, waiting for him. Shaved: nice.
Once Vince had been the master of a thousand exotic positions- there had even been some talk of putting him in a remake of “Kama Sutra,” until an ill-timed racial slur from Ari sent the New Delhi investors straight into Toby McGuire’s waiting arms. He didn’t remember quite when the change had come, but he preferred Missionary now. Nice, simple, clean, no twisting his body into positions it no longer snapped back from. And no memories, just sweet escape.
Seven minutes later, it was over. The girl tucked him into the big bed, gave him a tiny peck on the cheek. When she let herself out, Vincent Chase had already slipped into the blessed forgetfulness of a dreamless sleep, free for a few hours from the ghosts of his sun-dappled past and his long-lost brother, Johnny “Drama” Chase.
Ryan M. Moore 