I remember promising to post a few samples of stories on the old blog, but never really getting around to it.
So tell you what. As I said in my first post, there's this story that just doesn't want to find a home: "Consummation". I don't think it's the greatest story or even nearly as good as some of the others I've written - partly because I don't actually enjoy hard-boiled: not my eggs and most certainly not my fiction.
I'm going to break the story up into a few sections - actually, I'll just use the breaks as they appear in the original document - and post it here in dribs and drabs.
This was written yonks ago, so I best just mention that, if memory serves, it's probably better that only mature readers go any further.
Feel free to leave comments - scathing or otherwise.
Enjoy.
CONSUMMATION
By Sean James Bosman
William Bowman (Jr.) lifted his heavily shod feet and thumped them on to the table. The rubber soles were so thick it felt as though his heels were suspended in the air. He dug deep in his trench coat pocket, felt the silky cellophane wrapper and pinched a filter between his forefinger and thumb. He poked the cigarette into his mouth, running the tip of his tongue over the exposed filament. He liked the dry bitterness.
A match flared up, the sulfurous flare burning his nose as the woman across from him swam out of focus into a yellow ocean as he lit his smoke, cupping the end with both hands. He flicked the match across his office, in the general direction of the wastebasket. It missed, landing on bare concrete, where it shriveled and died.
He scooted his butt down on the seat, so his legs were slightly bent. Tobacco swirled into his sizeable lungs. He held his breath, then jetted the smoke back up his throat and out through his mouth.
The woman looked uncomfortable, perhaps offended.
Good, he thought. Bring her down a peg. Bowman looked her up and down again, his gaze lingering on her generous cleavage. Has she deliberately skipped that button – show off some of the wares?
She barely disguised her snort as a cough.
Bowman met her eyes. They were almond-shaped, steely grey: beautiful, even with the undertones of disgust.
“Do you mind?” she asked sardonically, waving a hand to fan through the cloud he puffed directly at her.
“Not at all,” Bowman replied politely. She glowered in return to his over-toothy grin. “Listen, this won’t be cheap.” He stretched, tapping ash into the ashtray precariously close to the edge of his pine desk.
The chain dangling from the ceiling fan clicked lazily against the fitting.
“Money isn’t a problem. When?”
He smiled at her, tossing his open palms up against his chest.
“Hold it just there, Miss Harrison.”
“Mrs. Harrison,” she said caustically.
“Sorry. Mrs. Harrison. I haven’t said I’ll do it.”
She reached down, snatching up her handbag. The wicker chair she was in rattled back as she stood, slinging the strap over her shoulder. “Thanks for your time,” she flicked her blonde hair, exposing a diamond earring that radiated as it picked up and refracted one of the narrow golden beams of late afternoon sunlight poking through the Venetian blinds. Bowman noticed her pencil skirt had hitched a little higher on her shapely legs as she headed for the door, hips swinging in an exaggerated stomp. He felt a warm stirring in his crotch.
He swung his legs off the desk as he mangled the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t, either,” he called after her, just as she opened the door.
She stopped, shoulders hunched: one hand on the doorknob, the other on the door frame, as if she needed the support.
Bowman could smell the warm fruity fragrance of her perfume lingering where she’d been as he rounded the desk. He stopped a few feet from her, and said in a low, almost sympathetic voice, “I just want to be sure you know what you’re asking. What you’re going to get?”
Mrs. Harrison lifted her head, but still didn’t turn to him.
“Once it’s done, it’s done.”
She turned to him, slowly.
She was young and beautiful. Some of the fading day lit her from one side, creating a halo of her long, straight hair. She looked up at him, her petite frame seeming to stiffen with resolve. The pout of her mouth – moist, he saw – puckered briefly before she sucked in her bottom lip, nibbling at it with pearl white, perfect teeth.
“I know what I’m asking,” her voice was the quiet whisper of a lover.
Bowman stared directly into her eyes, probing for signs of doubt.
He found none.
When he gestured towards the displaced chair theatrically, she smiled at him briefly and went back over to the desk.
***
{End of First Part}
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