A minute later, Yasmin had ordered food for Buffy then came back my way.
“Is that your girlfriend?” my waitress asked. Why she wasn’t working wasn’t clear to me.
“No, she’s his bodyguard,” Yasmin interrupted.
“Yes, she is,” I countered half a second later. I looked at Yasmin.
“You know that woman who beat me into the ground?” I met Yasmin’s gaze. She nodded. “Well, she was giving Buffy crap for all kinds of reason; only peripherally for befriending me. I didn’t have sex with her to get back at that lady. I did it because she needed me and I needed her. After this, we can’t engage in intercourse for… 71 days. It’s complicated.”
“Sex with you is some sort of gift?” another one taunted.
“Absolutely,” I grinned. “Ask every other woman I’ve been with. Hell, they love me so much, when we break up they normally take some sort of weapon to me, books being the most popular, but I’ve been shot at, stabbed, punched, slapped and wracked too.”
There was a moment of silence. Yasmin had her own war story that was well known.
“I’ve seen him naked,” Yasmin’s smile cut through the tension. “He has the scars to prove it.”
“You peeked when we were changing?” I gasped. I wasn’t really all that surprised.
“Yes,” she snickered. “They only have Women’s changing rooms where Cael works,” she related to the other ladies. The conversation may have flipped back to Portuguese yet the words were definitely descriptive. Either that, or my penis had slipped passed my zipper and the buttons on my shirt had burst off exposing my broad chest and rock hard abs.
Yasmin looked at me and said, “E o meu P. A.” The girls all laughed.
“Anyone going to clue me in on the joke?” I requested. By mutual consensus, they agreed not to – bitches. For a while, this man had been yelling from the kitchen. If finally dawned on me, and our waitress, the cook had been calling her to pick up her orders.
I could have ignored her short denim skirt and seductive sway of the hips, but that would have been disingenuous. Besides, in some cultures, if your ‘man’ wasn’t noticing the women around you, he was somewhat less of a man. I unleashed my inner ‘machismo’ and oinked. Yasmin shoved me while laughing. The other women found my being distracted amusing as well.
I could really get used to Brazilian culture especially when that included Brazilian women. After lunch, we picked up Buffy on the way out. Buffy ‘thanked’ Yasmin – in Portuguese. Mother-fucker. That was so unfair. Never one to miss an opportunity to make a bad situation better – or worse, I asked Buffy what ‘E o meu P. A.’ meant.
Buffy said something to Yasmin in Portuguese. Yasmin responded. They both laughed – bitches.
“It is a term of endearment,” Buffy assured me. Sure it was. That is why neither one would tell me what it meant – I repeat yet again; bitches.
[FYI: ‘E o meu P. A.’ (P. A. stands for Pinto Amigo) literally means ‘my friend Penis (or) my penis friend’. In Brazilian Portuguese slang (many thanks to a buddy from Portugal who saved me from a grievous linguistic error) this is a term of sexual endearment indicating trust and a sexual history, but don’t tell Cael that.]
Yasmin and I walked a ways before she had to head in a different direction. We kissed. I kept my hands firmly on her hips like a good boy. She put her hand down my pants and stroked my cock for about a minute, in public.
“Next time, I think we have sex,” Yasmin winked before departing. I watched her walk away until she vanished in the crowd. She didn’t look back. She was far too confident.
“Well, she seems nice,” Buffy caught me off-guard. She’d snuck up while I was watching Yasmin and she was still being so horribly friendly to me. Best of all, she assured me she’d be back to her normally aggressive self-come Monday morning – right about the time I finally got used to her being nice to me.
“Yeah… she is,” I sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Buffy inquired compassionately.
“What do you mean?” I stared evenly at Buffy. “Hanging out with me could get her killed, that’s what’s wrong.”
“That’s not likely to happen,” Buffy to reassure me. I shook my head.
“I’d ask you if you were nuts, but I know you are nuts,” I grunted. “Elsa wouldn’t kill you yet she’d kill Yasmin and her son without batting an eye if she felt a severe lesson was in order. Buffy, you work for animals. We both do. The difference being that you are one.”
“I don’t think you appreciate how popular you are with the company,” Buffy insisted. “You’ve worked really hard to impress them and they value your efforts.” I screamed to the Heavens. Elsewhere, I would have drawn some serious looks. In NYC, I barely drew any notice.
“Yeah – great. Remind me to clap like a pet seal Monday morning. Buffy, you, Katrina and a few others are grinning, thinking you’ve made great strides on this New Directive and the crime for a security guard shooting me as I walk in the office every day is the same – a transfer to someplace less pleasant. Correct me if I’m wrong,” I laid into her.
“The difference is that they don’t want to shoot you,” Buffy countered.
“Wow, if you put ‘you-Buffy’ in place of ‘you-Cael’ you will realize how inconsequential that is,” I informed her. “I’m a human being – unless I’m in Havenstone. Inside, my well-being is based solely on your sufferance – just like a test monkey.”
“If you really empathized, you would realize the only other people that walk around think ‘gosh, I shouldn’t murder that person today’ are serial killers. Yet you expect me to be thankful for tap dancing faster than you shoot at my feet. You have this happy dream that I’ve accomplished anything,” I shook my head.
“In 71 days one of you is going to kill me – that is the reality I’m staring down,” I gazed at her.
“Why do you think we’ll turn on you then?” Buffy actually appeared upset.
“Havenstone has been letting me play with this ’84 Day’ fiction because it amuses all of you,” I took a deep breath. “Whatever I can do in the last 71 days of my life probably won’t matter.”
“You’ve made a difference with Aya and Oneida,” Buffy rallied.
“Great, I saved the life of someone who would stab me in the heart if I slapped her,” I countered. “As for Aya… I dread to think what she will go through when she figures out you’ve put me down like a rabid dog. I help her because I have to try, because the rest of you have written her off.”
We walked the rest of the way to the apartment in silence.
“Katrina is not going to like the results of our little chat,” Buffy mumbled. I laughed.
“Buffy, she knows. When the time comes she’s sending Elsa to take me alive. I don’t know how I’m going to beat her. It is one of the thousand, or so, things I’m working on,” I chuckled.
“I know Katrina better than you do,” Buffy rolled her eyes. “I think you under-estimate her affection for you.”
“I don’t doubt her affection for me,” I told Buffy. “I simply deem it to be valueless. Listen, it took me ten seconds to figure out what Aya needed at the Archery range.”
“Not a God-damn person who knew her their entire lives would have ever done what I did,” I continued. “It wasn’t that they didn’t understand what needed to be done – show a little faith in her. It was that none of them would have ever had the humanity to do it. Katrina could think the Sun rises and sets on me. It doesn’t change a damn thing that happens in 71days.”
I neglected to say that Katrina murdered/dueled her own grandmother to bring Desiree into the Epona fold. That was the head of her household. I wasn’t an Amazon, or even a woman. Buffy was making shit up to keep the insanity of her life at bay. Oh, she’d kill me if Katrina gave the order. She’d hate herself for it. That wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good though.
(Saturday Afternoon and then some)
Our conversation died for two reasons as I led the way into my apartment. First off, it was Havenstone business and neither one of us was foolish enough to talk about it in front of Timothy and Odette. The other reason would have been Brooke and Libra sitting on Timothy’s sofa. Those two stood up as we entered.
“Hi…” I got to say.
“We just came around to tell you that you are an…” Libra spat but then, “Which one is this?”
“You could have called first,” I snapped back. I reached for my phone… which wasn’t there. Odette sheepishly lifted my phone up from her side. I imagine that bitch had been ringing off the hook since my departure.
There was a major bitch-fest coming down the pipeline. I wasn’t going to let that happen. There is an advantage to people having a low opinion of you. It gives you the unspoken permission to act like a crass asshole whenever you feel like it.
“This lady is Buffy Dubois and she’s my bodyguard for the weekend,” I tried to sound bored.
“Listen, the restaurant we went to was long on sizzling hot food and short on ceiling fans, so I’m going to take a shower,” I callously stated. “Brooke, want to join me?” No, Brooke didn’t want to join me. She wanted to rip my hair out in large, painful clumps. She was the Princess and I was the bottom feeder with dirt under my fingernails (huge salary be damned).
“No, I don’t want to shower with you, you Jerk!” Brooke snarled. Sadly, now I was making poor use of my loyal Odette. Such is life. “We only stayed long enough to give you a piece of our minds.”
“I’ll come with you!” Odette peeped. She had been on the floor, back to the small space of wall between the workout alcove and the door to my bedroom.
Timothy was leaning on the portion of the living room wall next to the short hall that led to the bathroom and his bedroom. He seemed more and more amused as the encountered unfolded.
“No,” Brooke squalled. “I’m not done with him yet.” She followed me to the bathroom. Now normally, I would get a towel from the bathroom, go to my bedroom to strip down then return to the bathroom for a shower, or soak in the tub.