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The Game
Sexual content
Chapter 2
I’m beginning to like Abe, but he can’t help creating embarrassing interludes. This time he refused the table offered by the waitress and took another at the end of the breakfast room. That manoeuvre cost him a healthy tip. The waitress was about to pop. She was a hands-on person and wasn’t yet with the Christmas spirit. She considered losing her job and throwing us out. I can’t blame her. The hotel public areas have a non-stop gadoodle of sentimentally-sung carols. As the noise retreats from one speaker, the next comes into range, so there is no escape. Half an hour over breakfast is tolerable. A whole shift of Silent Night, Holy Night, sung at half speed with vibrato and the occasional falsetto, and I’d leave teeth-marks in the table-tops.
The breakfast room was vast, and only a few guests were present. Serving us at a far-flung
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Goddesses or 49 ½ shades of charcoal Crossdressing
Sexual content Chapter 3 Friday took a funny turn. I hadn’t noticed, but Abe’s wife had been gone weeks, which left Abe with a lot of pent-up libido. I gave the piper a tune to play and he played – again and again. I lost count actually. I reckon we finished breakfast around ten and went for tea at five-thirty. Our waitress had her feet up and was trying to get a quick nap before dinner started. She opened an eye as we entered. She shut it again and tried to ignore us. Then she opened both and sat up, with a grin from ear to ear. ‘My! Well, well. Look at you.’ I went the colour of my freckles. I remembered what I looked like at such times and couldn’t control my urge to look at the mirror behind the bar. ‘Yep, lady! We know what you have been doing!’ I will never forget her chuckle. A third new life had just begun!
Goddesses or 49 ½ shades of charcoal The Sting
Chapter 4 Mave organised our entry. There were plenty of questions about who her guests were. The doorkeeper was hesitant about letting us in. Mave played the race card. ‘It’s cos we’re black, ain’t it?’ ‘That’s shit and you know it, Mave. It’s because you and your girlfriend are trouble. Every time you are here, we get a visit from the police.’ ‘Have we been arrested?’ ‘I guess not.’ He sensed he wasn’t going to win, took some money from Abe and let us through. Things started bright enough upstairs, but as we descended, it became ever gloomier, but left our eyes time to adjust. Mave turned to Abe. ‘I need fifty for bribes.’ Abe fished a note out and she disappeared, but came back after a few minutes, looking pleased. ‘Seems your friend Dee is already down in the dark bit. Connie. Send her a text telling her we are held up in traffic and could be ho
Goddesses or 49 ½ shades of charcoal The Reckoning
Three hours later, I heard the lock whir and the chink of cups. Mave pushed in a trolley, with four breakfasts. She was dressed for her shift. We three slowly sat up and arranged ourselves to eat. ‘Sorry, Abe. I had to put this on your tab.’ Abe waved an uninterested hand. She ignored the breakfast she had brought and fiddled with the TV remote. A news channel sprang to life. The news was on a loop. After a few minutes our attention was riveted to the screen. ‘And now just in – a local businesswoman Dee Bradley gets caught in a domestic in that hotbed of intrigue and bad behaviour, Oscillations. Apologies for the picture quality, but they keep the lights low in that joint. You’ll soon know why!’ A grainy video showed the dungeon room. Dee, with her white skin and stockings, can be identified. Abe puts his hand on her butt. There was her smile. She was up for everything. Cath comes from nowhere, just a white blouse silhouette, slaps Dee, screa
Goddesses or 49 ½ shades of charcoal Settling Dust
Chapter 5Getting Dee to dish the dirt on Greg turned out to be cathartic for her and a huge embarrassment for me. It transpired he had only one worry that first night.‘He was thinking through if you, Connie, were in the industrial espionage game, too. Did you have the room wired up with cameras, ready to blackmail him?‘I knew my days in Middlesbrough were numbered, and asked Greg for a job. No sooner had I started than I discovered he wasn’t a man one can work for. There came the interview I dreaded. He told me to wire up your room, while you and he were having dinner.‘Silly me thought I could do the lascivious bit, thought I could sleep my way out of this mess. But going to bed with him was only part of the deal. I also had to find a spy within my old company. It had to be someone senior – not a clerk, as he put it. He suggested you, Connie, as t
Goddesses or 49 ½ shades of charcoal The Apartment
Chapter 6Abe disappeared in a flurry of research activity. Disappeared? I knew where he was – sitting in our room, but sensible communication was only possible at mealtimes.‘When are we leaving?’‘Not before the New Year. Someone you should be with?’‘I’ve sent electronic cards to the outstanding relations. I can do Christmas in Baltimore.’The waiter came to clear our dishes.‘Is Mave on today?’‘No, sir. She has finished till the New Year. We’d appreciate it if you could go to the check-in desk and tell us your Christmas plans and needs.’‘We’ll keep the room until the New Year. We won’t need any catering after tomorrow.’‘Very good, sir.’The waiter left our table.‘Why won’t we be eatin
Goddesses or 49 ½ shades of charcoal Breaking and Entering
Chapter 7Christmas Eve was in full swing. The shops were doing stampede trade, the shop assistants going from one tired foot to another, wishing for closing time and a moment of peace and reflection within their family constellation. About four in the afternoon, while mayhem was oozing through the streets, Abe phoned Cath and booked a taxi. Despite assurances that her husband’s lips were sealed like a flight recorder, he gave an address a mile from Greg’s apartment. It was an icy walk, which required us to hang on to each other, which was what we had been doing most of the day. We arrived at a fancy iron gate, scrolled and adorned with decorative security spikes. Through the bare trees we could make out a condominium in the distance.‘This had better work. I don’t fancy trying to find a cab home from here.’‘It has to work,’ he replied. ‘We are already
Goddesses or 49 ½ shades of charcoal The chase
The idea now, was to walk casually to the road and hail a taxi. ‘There won’t be a taxi, after midnight on Christmas Eve,’ I consternated. ‘Yes, there will! Trust me.’ ‘I trust you, but I hear a dog barking in the distance. Could it be a tracker hound?’ Abe was worryingly quiet. ‘An option of which I hadn’t thought,’ he admitted. ‘Why would they need a dog? Our tracks in the snow should be enough.’ ‘Not what I wanted to hear. What now? How long can we hide in this weather, before we have to give in, with frostbite or similar?’ ‘Let’s move deeper into the forest!’ He took my hand – nice gesture – and pulled me down an embankment and into some trees, which was all very well, but the stray light from the city, that had been bouncing off the clouds and providing good visibility, was blocked out. Theoretically, we know what total darkness must mean, except we have never experienced it. Theoretically, we know wild anim
Goddesses or 49 ½ shades of charcoal Christmas in Baltimore
Chapter 8The phone next to Abe rang. It was eight o’clock, Christmas morning, in a hotel in Baltimore. I guessed it must come from a long way eastwards of here – somewhere people are awake at this time. I was right. It was Dee calling from Cairo. Abe put it on speaker.‘Greg has been in touch. He knows you used my card to access the apartment. He has sworn “to fix me and all my tribe.” It sounds bad. Does he mean my family or you two, who it seems, despoiled his cathedral?’Abe was silent. Dee and I knew him well enough to not interrupt his thoughts.‘The tribe will be we three, Dee. I wouldn’t bother warning your family - just cause unnecessary anguish.’‘What if you are wrong, Abe?’‘I’m well paid not to be wrong on these matters. Trust me! I’m more trustworthy than your previous c
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