Here’s another one of those WIPs I started and didn’t finish. It just kind of petered out. I may pick it up again someday when I feel like it. Who knows. But check it out.

———-

“I’m sorry, sir, but this card has been declined.”

Even with the pounding bass of the techno music in the background, Kyle* Branson was sure everyone in the club had heard the bartender, especially the woman next to him who snickered and turned to tell her friend about it. Kyle ignored the smirk on the bartender’s face and accepted the card. “It’s all right, I have cash,” he said, pulling out a thick roll of hundreds from the pocket of his pants. He handed the bartender a hundred dollar bill, who looked at it suspiciously.

“Jesus, man, it’s real,” said Kyle’s friend Seth. “Trust me.” When the bartender shrugged and took it away, Seth turned back to Kyle, who was slipping the rest of the money back to his pocket. “Dude, what the hell was that about? This is what you get for spending thirty grand at the Tokyo Toy Expo. The bank probably put a hold on your account. Also, it’s called a billfold. Have you ever heard of it?”

“I’ve just always carried everything in my pockets.”

“Yeah, what are you, ten?” Seth shook his head. “And you can avoid shit like this happening again if you just accept one of those little black cards they’ve been offering you. You live in LA, dude. All you need is one of those cards and a driver’s license. Hell, if you had one of those, I don’t think you’d even need a license. You just flash one at the cop who pulls you over and he’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Branson, sir. I didn’t realize you were filthy stinkin’ rich from the Honda Civic you drive. Here’s a hooker for your trouble.’”

“I like my Civic,” Kyle said. “Why should I get a new car when it runs just fine?” It was the first car he’d ever owned. He purchased it with sixty thousand miles on it for four grand as a college freshman and six years later, it still ran like a dream.

“And yet you don’t hesitate to spend thirty grand on a little dinky robot that fetches your slippers,” Seth said dryly. “You should be driving a car befitting of a man in your position. Maybe an Aston Martin or something.”

“Yeah, because I foil evil villains and bang hot chicks for a living.”

“And if you had an Aston Martin, you’d be banging hot chicks left and right,” Seth replied. “When was the last time you plowed a woman you didn’t love? When was the last time you had sex with a strange woman just for the hell of it?”

Kyle didn’t answer. Instead he brought his sub-par, watered-down Scotch to his lips and took a deep drink. The last woman he’d gone on a date with was someone Seth introduced to him. She was beautiful, an aspiring actress who was looking for a Daddy to take care of her, and had read about him in Wired magazine, which Seth had no doubt provided for her in a misguided attempt to talk Kyle up. When Kyle picked her up in his 1997 Honda Civic and took her to his favorite restaurant—a cozy little Mexican restaurant down the street from his house in Burbank—he’d seen the look of dismay on her face and the evening was down hill from there. She pestered him to take her to Hyde, the hottest club in LA, and threw a hissy fit when he wouldn’t bribe the bouncer to let them in. She’d demanded he give her cab fare and left him standing on the curb. That was six months ago and he had not had any urge to go on another date.

Intellectually, he knew he was a good-looking guy. He was tall, possessed a good body that he’d inherited from a long line of corn-fed Midwestern farmers, and blessed with the black haired, blue eyed combination that he’d seen on the male models of his mother’s romance novels. He ran three miles every morning and did five hundred sit-ups every night before he went to bed. He knew he was attractive to women, but he’d never really felt comfortable talking to them. He muttered or merely stopped talking when he didn’t think he had anything to say. He was no good at making conversation.

Seth, on the other hand, who resembled an overgrown teddy bear with his husky frame, beard, and the big bushy mane on top of his head—he called it his Jewfro—was a smooth cat. Kyle had seen girls throw themselves at his feet, merely because he made them laugh. Seth proved that some women really did dig sense of humor in a guy. Kyle didn’t think himself very funny. He had one joke to tell and his delivery was always off. Once, he told the joke to his date and she laughed obligingly, but it soured the rest of the evening and at the end of it, she asked him to lose her number.

“There’s a woman I’d kill my own sister to fuck.”

Kyle didn’t bother looking up from his drink. For the past two hours, Seth had been saying the same thing about every remotely attractive woman who walked by them, and frankly, Kyle was tired of it. Every woman Seth pointed out was the same garden-variety pretty girl he saw everyday merely because he lived in Southern California. Not for the first time that night, he wished he’d stayed in the office.

In fact, he would have like nothing more than to go home to his quiet apartment and fall asleep watching old horror movies on TV. Somehow, Seth managed to talk him into buying a four hundred dollar Armani shirt and equally expensive pants just so he could sit in some overcrowded club and get jostled every five minutes by some Valley skank wearing very little clothes and too much perfume.

To add insult to injury, he just paid twelve dollars for a watered down Scotch that tasted like something his housekeeper cleaned the toilet with.

“Naw, I’m serious, Ky… check that bitch out.” Seth jabbed him on the chest with his elbow to underscore his point. “Damn… hottest piece of ass I’ve seen all night.”

“Wow, I’m sure she’d be thrilled if she heard you refer to her that way.” But Kyle finally looked and felt all the breath in his body leave him in one big whoosh.

He felt as though he were watching a Prince music video. Everything slowed down, the lights got soft, and some guy went nuts with the fog machine, but instead of Prince stepping out of the shadows, it’s this woman, and Kyle couldn’t keep his eyes off of her. With her long, dark hair and voluptuous body encased in the black leather mini-dress she wore, she looked like a comic book artist’s rendition of what a woman looked like. She was Jessica Rabbit and Wonder Woman rolled into one. No, she was his masturbatory fantasies about Lynda Carter come to life.

She strode purposefully into the club and the crowd parted before her. Kyle watched with rapt attention as she stopped, propped her hands on her hips, and scanned the room as though searching for someone. A hipster dressed in a designer outfit walked up to her and tried to engage her, but she didn’t even look at him. When the punk placed his hand on her arm, Kyle was halfway off of his stool before he realized what he was doing. But the woman merely turned her head toward the hipster, leaned toward him as though to whisper something in his ear, and the punk practically stumbled on his own feet trying to get away from her. With a smirk twisting her sensuous lips, the brunette returned to scanning the room until her gaze landed on him. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at him and Kyle felt his heart jump up to his throat as she began to walk toward him.

“I think that cougar is coming for you, man,” said Seth somewhere near Kyle’s ear.

“Cougar? Why would you call her that?” Kyle asked absently. The woman who was definitely headed towards him was jiggling in the proper areas. Her full, perky breasts looked like they were trying to jump out of the square neckline of the sleeveless skin-tight dress she wore and Kyle couldn’t look away.

“She’s what—thirty-five, thirty-six?” Seth said. “She looks like the kind of chick who comes to these clubs to pick up on younger guys—fucks the shit out of them and tosses them out afterward.” He clapped Kyle on the back. “You lucky bastard.”

Kyle swiveled in his stool to look at his friend. “What are you talking about?”

“You really have to get out more, dude,” Seth said, shaking his head. “Cougars are sexually rapacious and love-starved older females who have a taste for young man-meat. That’d be you, buddy.” He grinned and punched him on the shoulder. “Well, I’m gonna bail or I might cramp your style. I’ve got my cellie on me, so call me once she’s done with you, so I can take you to the hospital or whatever.”

———-

*Protag’s name was changed to Kyle just ’cause I feel like it, dang.

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