Lust and Letters: The Handyman, Episode I Read online

  As he turned onto the main road, his now free hand was still held up high, along with his middle finger.

  Even I had to laugh at that one.

  It all seemed like a long time ago now. And you know what? I’m beginning to think that Mackey was right about everything. Stella had me fooled. She hadn’t been a muse for me, any more than she’d been the one to bring me good luck. She put a roof over my head, however, and kept me well. For that, I was entirely grateful. But the muse was not there. The inspiration was not there. I was a man trapped in his lust for his woman, a slave to my passion, to my lust.

  But passion was not enough. Nor was lust. Never was. Lust without love is as empty as a shallow grave and just as dirty. A hand job into a dirty tissue, selfie style. What I needed was to get out of this rut. I needed to experience something new. Something that would allow me to write a novel not even Mackey would recognize. A novel that would shock the New York publishers and make them beg for my signature on a contract so big it would land on the New York Times front page.

  I was going to go through with Tara’s plan. I would get rid of her husband for her, and collect invaluable experience in the meantime.

  I would be her handyman.

  Stella came back out of the bedroom. She was dressed in a long white dress with an open V-neck front. Her olive skin against the white made her look edible. A part of me wanted to throw myself at her just one more time before she left the house for her dinner date. But I knew she would only resist me. The frustrations of an addict.

  “You look lovely, Stel,” I said, pouring myself another whiskey.

  “Sure, I can’t bring you home something to eat?”

  I was holding the glass of booze in my hand. I glanced down at it.

  “Got everything I need right here.” It wasn’t the truth, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

  “Sure you do,” she said, grabbing her car keys off the dining room table. “Write well. And congrats once again on your success today.”

  “It’s not quite a success yet. But after the research I’m about to engage in, it will be quite the story. Might even make a big novel, eventually. I even have the perfect title in mind. Savage Sins.”

  She nodded like she was saying, Not bad.

  “Get to it then,” she said.

  “My best to Allison.” In my mind, I pictured the attractive Asian-American who still lived with her ex-husband, or soon to be ex, in the same house. Lived in a state of siege, that is.

  Opening the door to the garage, she exited the room, closed the door behind her hard. She hit the wall-mounted button that raised the overhead door. I downed the shot of whiskey and waited until the car started, backed out, and the garage door closed until I grabbed the keys to the house, and made my way back through the front door, and over the length of two front lawns to Tara’s.

  I rang the doorbell but tried the opener at the same time. The door was open. She came running into the vestibule through the kitchen.

  “Jesus, Vic, you scared the living daylights out of me.”

  “Sorry. It was open.”

  “You’re lucky Stan’s not home.”

  “Maybe it’s you who’s lucky.”

  She was wearing a black silk button-down. It was unbuttoned enough to reveal some serious skin. Serious cleavage. Her sandy blonde hair was parted to the side, and her eyes were bright and excited. At the same time, I sensed the anxiety in them. She was still the luscious woman I’d been with that morning. Now, however, she seemed to be revealing her weaker side.

  Why?

  Because she knew I was about to accept her offer. It was not only the first step in the murder process. It made the prospect of killing her husband all the more real.

  “I’m in,” I told her. Straight up. No chaser.

  She blinked, licked her lips. Not like she was trying to be seductive, but like her mouth had suddenly gone dry. If she’d possessed an Adam’s apple, it would have bobbed up and down in her neck, like a turkey about to face the hatchet on Thanksgiving morning.

  “Sure,” was all she said.

  I was taken aback, and she knew it.

  “Look, doll,” I said, gesturing with my thumb over my shoulder. “If your pretty little feet have suddenly turned to ice, I can walk out of here right now, and we never had this conversation.” Exhaling, biting down on my bottom lip. “Today, never happened. Spiders included.”

  Lowering my hand, I turned, made for the front door.

  “Wait,” she insisted.

  I stopped, turned.

  “What’s your plan, Vic? How are you going to kill my husband?”

  I revealed my plan to her. It was a damn simple plan, and considering her husband’s love of his man cave, the most logical one. The short and long of it: Stan would come home from work, head down the basement stairs to escape into his cave. When he hit the second stair, the tread would be loose, and he’d tumble to his death. Easy peasy. It would be considered a common household accident.

  But first, Tara had to make sure she got him a little drunk, if not more than drunk.

  “Listen,” I said, looking at my wristwatch, seeing that it was past five in the late afternoon. “How long until he comes home?”

  She brought both her hands to her face, her eyes wide.

  “Oh, dear god.” The anxiety dripped from her eyes like tears. “We’re actually going to do this today, aren’t we?”

  “We’ve got to be committed and quick,” I said. “I take a night to sleep on this, I’ll lose my nerve.”

  Slowly, she lowered her hands. She did something then that was both surprising and welcome. She smiled.

  “Okay, Vic, I’m committed. You’re my handyman, and you’re going to fix this once and for all. And when it’s done, I’ll pay you what I promised.”

  I held up my hands, shook my head.

  “My payment,” I said. “I’ve changed my mind.”

  She scrunched her brow. “I don’t get it. We had a deal.”

  “I don’t want your money. Somehow taking your money doesn’t feel right. It feels more like a payoff for cold blooded murder. You know, blood money. All I want from you is the experience.”

  “The experience?” she asked confused.

  “The experience I will use in my writing. The looks, sounds, and feel of a man who’s had a bad accident. A fatal accident.”

  “Is that what this will be then, Vic? An accident?”

  “I’ll make sure the conditions exist for an accident to happen. The rest is up to fate.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, if he should happen to survive, then we’ve had our chance. The ship will have sailed.”

  “We could always try again.”

  “That’s another one of my rules. You get one shot and one shot only.”

  “How is it you, a man who’s never done this kind of thing before, has established rules?”

  “I’m making them up as I go, honey.”

  “Then we’d better do it right.” She took hold of my forearm. “And here’s a rule I’m making up on the spot. I do not accept your first rule. You will get half the money as promised. Fifty/fifty, pal. Maybe you won’t want this on your conscience, but you are taking the money, regardless.”

  “Because it will lighten the load considerably on your conscience.”

  She nodded and removed her hand.

  “Do the math,” she said.

  Me, I went back to looking at my watch.

  “Back to my original question, Tara. How long until he gets home?”

  She glanced at the clock on the wall in the kitchen.

  “One hour,” she said.

  “Will he have been drinking?”

  “He always has a couple of pops with the boys before coming home.”

  “That’s good,” I said. “He drink at home?”

  “Pours a scotch as soon as he’s through the door.”

  “Got any Ambien or Xanax in the house?”

  “Will Valium
do?”

  Now it was my turn to smile.

  “Go get it,” I said. “I want you to have his drink poured and mixed for him before he gets home.”

  She gently placed her hand on my mid-section.

  “There’s still some time,” she said. “I want to do something for you. Give you a down payment, Mr. Handyman.”

  She went down onto her knees, on the spot. She unbuckled my belt, unbuttoned my pants, and took me into her mouth. The fact that I was so hard was a testament to how attractive she was, how seductive, and how good she was at sucking my cock. What the hell was wrong with her husband that he felt the need to sleep on the couch in the basement? I was pent up and nervous over what I was about to do, but somehow, she was able to calm me down. I’d fucked her that morning, and fucked Stella that afternoon. I just couldn’t get enough. Now my cock was as hard as a rock again, and she was taking all of it in her mouth, doing things to the overly sensitive head with her never still tongue.

  She freed her mouth and worked it with her hand, slowly, but also like she meant it. Grinning she said, “If I didn’t know any better, Vic, I’d say I taste pussy on your cock. And it’s not mine. I know what I taste like.”

  I saw myself on the couch with Stella, my face buried in her pink wet pussy. I saw her legs spread and once again I heard her pleasure-filled moans, and I felt my cock begin to throb like it was hooked up to an electrical outlet.

  “I fucked Stella this afternoon,” I said. “I made her cum with my mouth and my cock.”

  “Are you a sex addict, Vic? Is it all you think about?”

  Sex. It was always on my mind then.

  “It’s quite possible,” I admitted. “Very possible.”

  She was working me with both her hands now, running them from the tip of the head all the way down to my balls, and back again.

  “Did you fuck her on the couch, in the living room?” she asked. “With the curtains open?”

  My throat began to close up on itself, my chest tightened, my brain came alive with adrenalin. I knew I was going to release soon. Very soon.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You both like it that way. I’ve seen you. Seen you both, on the couch. Did you know that?”

  “When?”

  “I watched you once, from out on my lawn. You were right there in front of the window, fucking. I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing. I had to go inside and rub my pussy.”

  “What did you think about?”

  “I pretended Stella was going down on me on the couch while, at the same time, I was sucking you off. Sucking your hard, eight-inch cock. She was running her long tongue up and down my entire pussy, tasting my pink clit, and the length of your cock was down my throat. I kept telling her how much I couldn’t wait to lick her wet pussy.”

  That did it. I exploded. The first cum shot squirted out of me like a bullet from a gun. Quickly, she took me in her mouth then and caught the second and third explosions. Then, using her tongue, she was careful to capture every single drop. She was so good, I was in heaven, even if what I was about to do would one day send me straight to hell.

  She provided me with a hammer and a screwdriver. I didn’t have any tools of my own. We were hurting for time, but what I had planned would only take a few minutes at most. I headed back down the basement stairs, came around the entire wood staircase. It had been originally constructed not with wood screws, but instead, six penny nails. A cheap cob job, just like the basement stairs in my house. Stella’s house, I should say. But that was my good luck, and her husband’s bad luck. I jammed the business end of the screwdriver under one of the nails on the third stair tread from the top, tapped the hard plastic grip with the hammer head.

  The nail head emerged from out of the wood, just enough for me to fit the hammer claw under it and for me to yank it out even more. I wrapped both hands around the hammer grip and, using all my strength, pulled the nail out. Not entirely, but enough so that it would weaken the stair tread. There were three more nails attaching the tread to the long, vertical stair frame. I loosened all three of them.

  Heading back up the stairs, I tested the tread with my foot. It wasn’t so loose that it would completely collapse when her husband stomped down on it. But it was loose enough so that given the right conditions . . . in this case, his being drunk and drugged . . . there was a very good chance he’d loose his balance, go tumbling down the entire staircase and onto the concrete floor below. There was no guarantee it would happen this way, but then, there was an equally good shot at it going down entirely as planned.

  I made my way back into the kitchen. Tara was in there pouring a tall glass of scotch for her husband. Set out on the counter was a yellow bottle filled with pills. The Valium she had mentioned before. She opened the bottle, shook out not one, but four little blue pills. Crushing them between her index finger and thumb she added the powder to the drink, then stirred the volatile cocktail with a teaspoon.

  She looked at me, grinned.

  “All set,” she said.

  “I’m ready, too,” I said.

  I went to her, pressed my mouth against hers, felt her tongue play with my own. I cupped her ass, and felt up her shirt, gently squeezing her breast. Her nipple was hard between my fingers. She went down on her knees so fast, I thought she’d fainted. It was all she could do to unbuckle my belt, unbutton my pants. How was it possible that I was hard again? Was the prospect of killing a man making me an unstoppable sex machine? I was already a machine. She pulled out my eight inches of hardness and just like she had less than a half hour ago, took it all the way into her mouth, once more.

  Who knew murder could be so sexy? So exciting?

  Like I said, we were pressed for time. She worked me so fast and hard I could feel myself filling up with each stroke. But this time, I wanted something more. Something for her.

  “Turn around,” I insisted. “Bend over.”

  “Make me your bitch, Vic.” She was panting. “Make me your whore.”

  She turned around, bent herself over so that her perfect ass was staring me in the face. I pulled her silk panties down around her knees and slid into her pussy. It was hot and slick. I then pulled out and pushed my cock into her ass. It made her moan with desire and pleasure beyond pleasure.

  I thrust my cock in and out of her tight ass and used my fingers on her clit until she came, letting loose with a scream. I pulled out then, and she spun around, dropping to her knees.

  “I want more of your cum, Vic,” she demanded.

  When she wrapped her lips around my cock again, I exploded. I swear I could have shrieked it was so intense. But I kept my mouth shut. Kept my shit together.

  When she stood up, she placed her hand my face and kissed my lips.

  “There’s more where that came from when this thing is over,” she said.

  Just then, the sound of a car pulling up in the driveway.

  I made my way back downstairs to the basement. Lights off. I heard the front door open.

  “Tara!” Stan barked.

  He sounded gruff. His footsteps were heavy. Laden. Maybe he was already drunk. That would be a good thing.

  “Tara!” he shouted once more.

  The pitter patter of footsteps going from the kitchen into the vestibule.

  “Hi honey,” she said, Betty Crocker house-frau happy. “How was your day?”

  “Does it really matter, Tara?”

  “I have a drink waiting for you. On the counter. Smells like you’ve already had a couple.”

  “Stopped for drinks with the boys at the Nineteenth Hole. Please don’t give me one of your interrogations. I’m tired already.”

  “Did you play hooky today? Golf a little?”

  “We did nine holes. Where’s that drink?”

  “I told you. On the counter.”

  There was a pause in their conversation, if you wanted to call it that. I pictured him staring her down. He’d be wearing a golf shirt and trousers that were too tight for his
beer gut. His lower arms would be tanned, but his upper arms and the rest of his torso would be white as a ghost. A golfer’s tan.

  “Don’t get snippy with me, Tara,” he said, his voice low but somehow screaming.

  “Sorry,” she said, sheepishly. “I didn’t realize--”

  “Yeah, just think before you talk.”

  More heavy footsteps into the kitchen. I heard him grab the glass of scotch off the counter.

  “This looks inviting,” he said. “Thanks for pouring it. Say, where're the kids?”

  “They’re with my mother for dinner,” she said. “I thought it would be nice if we could have a nice quiet supper on our own. We haven’t had a date night in forever.”

  He laughed. “Imagine you, getting all mushy on me.”

  “We used to be close, Stan. I’d like to get that back.”

  “You would, would you?”

  I heard ice clinking against the glass. He was not only drinking his drink. He was drinking it down fast. Tara was such an attractive lady. A nice lady. A good mother. Okay, sure, she wanted her husband dead, and she was willing to pay a lot for it. But I didn’t need to lay eyes on this man to know what kind of creep he was. The type of man who might make every effort possible to destroy Tara’s life should she attempt to leave him. He’d make sure she never saw the kids again. He’d try to bankrupt her. Ruin her reputation as both a woman and as a potential employee. He’d make her life a living hell. These are the things I wanted to believe if I was going to make his accident happen.

  Tara hated Stan. She had good reason to hate him. I couldn’t blame her one bit.

  “I’ll get dinner started, honey,” I heard her say.

  “You do that,” he said, his words slurred. “I’m going . . . down . . . stairs.”

  I heard him take a step. It sounded like a stumble. Like he was tripping over his own feet.

  “Are you okay, honey?”

  “Something,” he said, his voice slow, becoming inaudible, like an old-fashioned vinyl record played at too slow a speed. “Something . . . not good . . . in my drink.”

  “Maybe you should lie down for a while,” Tara suggested. “You’re overtired. You really shouldn’t drink like that after spending the afternoon in the hot sun.”