Excerpt From "The Professional"...Hurricane

New Orleans, Louisiana
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Morning

I was chilling on a lounger in Sherry’s back yard. It was warm out, but it was early and the sun hadn’t kicked in full force. By the time it did we’d be back inside, probably sexing each other some more. That was cool, but this was my first time in New Orleans and I’d hoped to see more of the city. But as soon as Sherry picked me up at the airport on Friday she’d only been about one thing: Sex. So the only part of New Orleans I’d seen was from the inside of her Bentley as we rode from the airport to her estate.

Sherry has a nice place, courtesy of having had a better lawyer than her ex-husband in their bitter divorce war. From what she’d told me, this house had been in his family for three generations. She took it from him out of spite. She got the Bentley, a Maybach and a ton of cash, too. If you want to applaud her you can say that she didn’t do too badly for a woman whose last job was as a waitress at Denny’s when she was twenty years old. That was twenty years ago. I know all this because she told me. She brags incessantly about how she took her ex to the cleaners. Not that I cared or wanted to hear about her marriage. I was getting paid to fuck her. But listening to a woman’s issues often comes with the job. Some women want to do more talking than fucking. I don’t care; the pay is the same.

I was sipping cranberry juice and watching Sherry swim laps in her in-ground pool. She was stroking like she was training for The Olympics. Her naked brown body cut the glimmering blue water like a shark. Not bad for a forty year-old sister.

When she reached the near end of the pool she stopped and smiled at me and blew me a kiss. I gave her a “thumbs up” sign. She called out, “I bet that white bitch of his can’t swim like this,” and pushed off for more laps.

I shook my head. Sherry’s ex-husband’s new wife was white, and that pissed her off to no end. My gut told me that during her divorce settlement she went after her ex-husband’s family home because she wanted to have a hold on him, something that would lure him back to her. That’s why three years after her divorce she was still talking about him non-stop. His remarrying must have killed her hope of reconciliation. And to marry a white chick? Sherry probably wanted to take him to court again so she could go after his liver and kidneys. And it’s probably not a coincidence that the dude remarried two weeks ago, and last week Sherry hired me to come down and spend a week fucking her. Guess she wanted to show him, at least in her own heart.

Sherry reached the far end of the pool and climbed out. Even from a distance her heart-shaped ass looked good. I was lying there naked with my dick half hard. Seeing her booty pushed my desire up a notch, to about three-quarter strength. I watched her as she climbed up the diving platform ladder. Based on her swimming over the past few days this meant she was about finished with her morning swim. She’d usually take a dive and do one more lap before calling it quits.

She stood at the edge of the platform with her arms outstretched, looking like some kind of Nubian goddess under the morning sun. I looked around. This mansion sat on five acres bordered by thick stands of trees. The odds were slim that anyone would see her out here naked, even though she was up high right now. I got the feeling that Sherry wouldn’t give a damn if someone could see her.

She gathered herself and leaped high into the air with her arms outstretched like a graceful bird. As she descended she brought her arms down and her hands together like the tip of a spear. She hit the water perfectly, barely making a splash.

I heard footsteps behind me and looked around. Sherry’s housekeeper and cook had come out to the patio and was heading our way. She was a cute Creole sister in her twenties named Marcel. I took a quick moment to check out her nice legs and a shapely body that she kept hidden under a maid’s uniform and apron, and then turned back to the pool. Sherry resurfaced in the middle of the pool and was swimming our way.

As Marcel passed me she said, “Good morning sir.” She spoke with a slight Cajun accent. As I looked at her she cut her eyes away quickly, apparently embarrassed at seeing me out here with nothing on.

I said, “Good morning, Marcel,” and checked out her body as she stepped to the pool. Three-quarters went to fully loaded.

I noticed that Marcel held a cordless phone in her hand. As Sherry climbed out of the pool she said, “You have a call,” and handed her the phone.

Sherry walked away to have some privacy as she talked on the phone. I watched her as she walked naked toward the grass. The morning sun made the water droplets on her body glisten like she’d been sprinkled with a thousand tiny diamonds. Her skin looked like jewel-encrusted chocolate. Sexy.

Marcel waited for Sherry to finish her call, making sure that she kept her back to me. I was tempted to say something to mess with her, but Sherry seemed like the very jealous type. She’d paid Asad for my services in advance. In thirty-two years in the game no woman had ever asked for her money back after receiving my services. I wasn’t about to blow my record by playing games with the help. No matter how fine she happened to be.

Sherry finished her call and came back to us. I gaped at her bouncing titties as she walked, and at the swell of her hips and the way the droplets of pool water glistened in the trimmed patch of black hair over her pussy. She didn’t seem to care in the least that Marcel was seeing us naked.

“That was my daughter,” Sherry explained. “She lives in Miami, which makes no sense because she’s terrified of storms. There’s some little tropical storm named Katrina or something in the Bahamas that might reach Florida, so she’s flying up here tomorrow to wait it out. So while she’s here I’ll put you up in a hotel, Lucas. It shouldn’t be for more than a day or so. I’m sure this will end up being nothing but a little rain in Florida for a day. Then she’ll go back and I’ll send for you.”

That was cool with me. A couple of days break from Sherry would give me a chance to check out New Orleans. I specifically wanted to see Bourbon Street. That place was supposed to be a non-stop party. And for some reason that name intrigued me even back when I was a little kid and used to watch a cop show called Bourbon Street Beat. I’d been all over the world in my life, for business and for pleasure. I could have come down at any time over the past decades to visit New Orleans, but just never got around to it. You know how the saying goes: Life is what happens while you’re making other plans. Like five minutes earlier I thought I’d be spending the week in Sherry’s house and more specifically in her pussy. Now I had time to see the city.

Life is always full of surprises.

As Sherry handed the phone back to Marcel, Marcel said, “Breakfast will be ready in a half an hour, Miss Nichols.” She was looking at Sherry and making sure that she kept her back to me. Maybe seeing her employer naked wasn’t a new thing for her. That thought made some ideas pop into my head – things I wouldn’t mind seeing that had nothing to do with touring New Orleans.

Sherry said, “Hold breakfast for an hour, please.” Then she grinned over at me and said, “I need an appetizer before the main course.”

Sherry walked around Marcel to me. She grabbed a condom packet off the patio table next to the lounger and used her teeth to rip it open. Then she leaned over me and rolled the latex skin onto my dick. I looked around Sherry and caught Marcel sneaking a peek. Busted, she looked away in a hurry.

Sherry was still dripping wet from the pool as she straddled me and sank down onto my hardness. Her pussy was wet, too. I gripped her hips and pushed up into her heat. She gripped the top of the lounger backrest and grunted, “Uh, damn!”

Yeah, I know.

Her titties were hanging right in front of my eyes, swaying as she slid up and down on me. Their heft caressed my face. Her nipples were still stiff from her swim in the cool water. They were inviting me to have a taste. As I started to lick and suck them I heard Marcel’s crepe-soled footsteps fading back toward the house as she made herself scarce.

I looked up at Sherry. “I think she was embarrassed,” I said.

“Marcel?”

“Yes.”

“So what? I pay her very well to do her job and stay out of my business,” Sherry said. She repositioned herself over me, moving from her knees to squatting over me on her feet to get better leverage. Then she started riding me for real. Not bad for forty.

“I bet that white bitch can’t do him like this,” she said. “I bet she can’t – hey!”

Fuck this. I was tired of hearing about her ex and his white wife. I lifted Sherry up off me, spun her around and pushed her to her hands and knees. Then I got up and hit it from the back. I hit it hard enough so that the only thing coming out of her mouth were moans and groans and “yes daddy’s.”

When I was done with Sherry I helped her stagger to the pool house where we showered and put on robes and went in to have breakfast. I made up my mind that the next time she opened her mouth about her ex and his new woman I was going to stick my dick in it.

———-

New Orleans, Louisiana
The French Quarter
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Afternoon

I got back to my hotel suite in mid-afternoon, feeling good after my walk down Canal Street to Bourbon Street. It was hot and humid out and I was sweaty as hell but I enjoyed the exercise. Too bad Bourbon Street was a disappointment. It wasn’t at all what I’d envisioned. It was little more than a wide alley with a bunch of eateries and shops designed to relieve tourists of their money. Not much else was going on down there. Maybe things only jumped off during Mardi Gras.

I checked out the local television news as I dried off after my shower, hoping to catch up on what the Yankees were doing. But the newscast started off with the meteorologist talking about that storm named Katrina, saying that it had passed over southern Florida as a Category 1 Hurricane. They’d originally projected that it was going to travel west into the Gulf of Mexico, but now it looked like it was hanging around the coast to kick Florida’s ass some more. It looked like Sherry’s daughter was right to get the hell out of Dodge.

I’d checked into the hotel yesterday. I’d talked to Sherry once on the phone since then. But she understandably was busy spending time with her daughter. As long as I got paid I didn’t care.

As I was rubbing on lotion someone knocked on the door to my suite. I wrapped my towel around me and went to the door and checked the peephole. It was Marcel, Sherry’s housekeeper. I wouldn’t ordinarily open the door to someone when I was wearing just a towel, but it wasn’t like Marcel hadn’t already seen everything I had to offer. So I opened the door.

I didn’t know who looked more surprised, me or her. Marcel’s eyes got wide as she scanned me up and down. I guess my eyes were just as big. This afternoon she had her hair down was wearing lip gloss, and instead of her housekeeping gear wore a pretty sundress and sandals. The upper part of her dress was a form-fitting knit tube that showed that she was nicely endowed up top. The bottom wasn’t short enough to be a mini, but it showed off a hell of a lot more of her legs than when she was dressed for work. She looked as hot as the temperature outside.

“Hey Marcel, what’s up?” I asked.

Marcel said, “Miss Nichols wanted me to let you know that due to the storm her daughter will be staying longer than she’d thought. She sends her apologies and wants you to know that you will be paid in full.”

“Thanks,” I said, “but she could’ve called. You didn’t need to make a trip into the city.”

“She wanted to make sure that you were…taken care of during the rest of your stay.”

“Oh, is that right?” I smiled.

“That’s what she instructed,” Marcel said. She looked a little nervous.

We were still standing in my suite’s open doorway. I studied Marcel closely. I know women, but I couldn’t read yes or no in her eyes. So I had to ask. “Do you want to be here?”

She swallowed her nervousness and said, “You should go back to New Jersey.”

“Oh.” I took that as a definite no.

“The storm, Lucas. It’s going to be very dangerous. You should go home before it’s too late to leave.”

I shook my head. “They just said that the storm is hanging around Florida.” I nodded my head into the suite in the direction of the sounds from the television like the weather man was in the bedroom waiting to back me up.

“I spoke to my sister,” Marcel said. “She’s in college. She said that Katrina is coming here, and that we should leave.”

I looked back at Marcel. “Is your sister majoring in Meteorology?”

“No. But she…sometimes she knows things.”

Okay, I didn’t even want to go there. This was Louisiana. There was supposed to be all kinds of strange voodoo stuff going on down here. “Are you leaving?” I asked.

“Yes. She and I are leaving tomorrow night to stay with family in North Carolina. You really need to go, Lucas.”

“Okay, I might. Thanks for the heads up, Marcel.”

“You’re welcome. And yes, I want to be here.”

Before I could say anything she stepped past me into the room.

I turned to keep her in view, letting the door swing shut behind me. As she moved toward the bedroom she said, “May I use the shower?” She’d already sat down her purse and stepped out of her sandals. Now she was pushing the tube top part of her dress down around her hips. For a moment the vision of Marcel’s flawlessly smooth back tapering down to her trim waist took away my ability to speak. I followed her into the suite’s bedroom.

In the bedroom she stopped and turned around as her dress dropped down around her ankles. Damn. Full, firm titties that for some reason made me think of peaches and cream. Round hips decorated with the string of her thong. And yep, just like I thought… perfect legs.

“Be my guest,” I managed to stammer.

Marcel turned away again and peeled her thong down off her round bottom. Now naked, she vanished into the bathroom, leaving me standing there with the front of my towel sticking straight out.

I got rid of the towel and lay on the king-sized bed, watching the news as I waited for Marcel to come out of the shower. Some weather experts said that the hurricane had spawned some tornadoes near the Florida cities of Kendall and Sunset, but that nobody had been killed.

Marcel came out of the shower drying herself off. She left the bedroom and came back with her purse, from which she removed a bottle of something. I was too busy looking at her gorgeous nakedness to pay much attention.

She sat the bottle on the nightstand and headed back for the bathroom. My eyes locked on her ass as she moved. My heart pounded and my dick throbbed. I can usually take it or leave it when it comes to getting a woman’s booty. But Marcel’s ass was calling to me. I could almost feel myself getting her back there. That wasn’t supposed to happen. But there was something about her that was messing with me, making me feel a bit out of control of my desires. No woman had had that effect on me since I was a kid. It was bad for business not to be in control of myself. I took a deep breath to calm down just as she returned from the bathroom carrying a couple of hotel glasses.

Marcel sat next to me on the bed. Her hip brushed my thigh. My dick jumped. Something inside of me stirred. I felt like I wanted to grab her and ravage her like an animal. Weird.

She picked up the bottle. It was about the size of a bottle of salad dressing and had a cork stopper. The liquid contents were dark red. She pulled out the cork, poured a glassful and turned to me.

“I think you’ll like this,” she smiled. She held the glass out to me.

I looked at the bottle on the nightstand. It didn’t have a label. Uh-uh.

As if she’d read my mind Marcel said, “It’s wine, homemade by my uncle. It’s very good.”

I looked at her with a cocked eyebrow. Here I was in a strange city with a fine as hell young woman that I didn’t know. She’d gotten naked in front of me as if it was no bigger a deal than scratching her nose, and now she was asking me to drink who knows what from an unlabeled bottle.

Marcel shook her head at me as if I was being completely ridiculous. She raised the glass to her sexy lips. She drank half of the contents, and then handed the glass back to me. “You really should have some now,” she said. “Or you’re going to be in trouble.”

“How so?” I asked, still not completely trusting.

She leaned to me and gave me a slow, sweet kiss. My heart punched my lungs. If my dick had had a mouth you would have heard the growling in the next room.

Marcel broke our kiss and said, “Trust me now and thank me later.”

Okay, she did drink it first. I took the glass from her and tried a sip. It wasn’t bad – kind of a fruity taste, maybe like plums, but not quite.

When I’d finished it Marcel took the glass and refilled it. Once again she downed half of it and gave me the rest.

She watched me as I drank it down. Then she took the glass from me and put it on the nightstand. As she pushed me onto my back on the bed and said, “Sherry Nichols doesn’t know anything about pleasing a man. That’s why he left her. Je vous donnerai le plaisir.”

I’d spent some time in Paris. I understood a little French. But my brain was a little fuzzy all of a sudden, and it took me a moment to translate what Marcel had said.

I will give you pleasure.

She did not lie.

Marcel used her body on me – all of her body to get me off. Her lips, and mouth and tongue. The heels of her hands, her palms, her fingers. Her feet and toes. In the end I came so hard that my ejaculation was like a shuttle launch. It sailed from the bed halfway across the room to splatter on the carpet.

When I could breathe again I gasped, “Damn.”

Marcel giggled at my reaction. Then she looked at my manhood, which was acting like I hadn’t just come. I was as hard as titanium, still. She gazed into my eyes as she lowered her face slowly to mine. She teased my lips with the tip of her tongue and cooed, “Come on, Mr. Professional. Show me. Professionalize me.”

I took Marcel into my arms. Our bodies came together and joined naturally, like two rivers converging to become one. We didn’t fuck. We didn’t make love. We just merged. Merging was sweet.

That wine had my thoughts unfocused. I couldn’t think about doing to Marcel the things I’d learned over the years. I couldn’t demonstrate the skills I’d acquired. All I could do was be. I didn’t know if it was the woman or the wine or both, but just being with her was as good as any I’d ever experienced.

———-

New Orleans, Louisiana
The French Quarter
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Evening

We lay holding each other in the late evening gloom, kissing and talking about the city.

“You have to go to Bourbon Street at night,” Marcel said. “That’s when it’s fun. We can go tonight if you want. I’ll call my sister and see if she wants to hang with us.”

All I wanted to do was stay in bed and sex Marcel some more. It was the strangest feeling; I was satisfied but I still wanted more of her. I didn’t know how many times I’d come but I should have been done. But my dick was like a boxer who’d had his ass kicked and was on the canvas but struggling to get up to beat the count. It wanted to fight some more when the fight should have been over.

“Was there something in that wine?” I asked.

“It has all natural ingredients,” Marcel said. “Only my uncle knows what they are. It was passed down to him from our family’s generations.”

“Well, he could bottle that stuff and make a fortune.”

“It’s not for profit, Lucas. Only pleasure.”

Her speaking the word pleasure got me going again. I leaned over her and tasted her sweet, tender lips. Her kiss flipped the switch and the fighter was back on his feet, ready to kick ass. I moved over Marcel. She opened her legs and gave me what I needed.

We merged some more.

———-

“What’s your major?” I asked Marcel’s sister. I had to almost yell in her ear so that she could hear me over the noise.

Marcel’s sister, whose name was Aurelle, leaned to me and said, “Education!”

We were walking down Bourbon Street. Marcel was right. At night this didn’t even look like the same street.

The people were crowded on the sidewalk and on the street almost shoulder to shoulder. No way in hell could a car get down here. The police moved through the crowd on horseback. Music seemed to be coming from everywhere. On one part of a block you might hear rock music. A few steps down the street you heard R&B, or jazz, or Zydeco, the sound originated by Creoles. And then there were the aromas of food wafting from the various restaurants. Everything smelled absolutely delicious.

I was walking with Marcel and her sister on either side of me. Aurelle looked like a younger but taller version of her big sister. She was fine, too, but in an entirely different way. Marcel possessed the kind of beauty that would make a man say, “Damn, I want her.” But this girl Aurelle, she’d make many men say, “I have to have her.” It wasn’t just that she was beautiful. She had that vibe about her.

“So you want to be a teacher?” I asked Aurelle.

She said, “Yes…I want to teach small children…to help them on the right path while they’re young.”

I said, “Good for you.”

Marcel said, “Her problem is that she has no idea where she wants to teach. She can’t make up her mind.”

I looked back to Aurelle. “So you don’t want to stay here in New Orleans?”

We were in between the loudest areas of music now. Aurelle stopped and looked at me. “The storm is telling me that New Orleans isn’t the place for me to be,” she said.

“You mean that hurricane down in Florida?”

Aurelle nodded.

I said, “But the weather people are predicting that tomorrow it’s going to fizzle back down to a tropical storm.”

Aurelle nodded. “And then it will come back, and it will come here. You should leave tomorrow, Lucas, before it’s too late to get out.”

“I told him,” Marcel said.

Okay, these sisters were fine as hell, but they were a little off the edge of the road too.

“Where are you from?” Aurelle asked me.

“New Jersey – a city on the coast called Long Branch.”

Aurelle shivered like she’d caught a chill, even though the night was sweltering.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yes…yes I’m fine,” she said.

Marcel looked at her little sister, hard. “Did you see something?”

Aurelle said, “La Branche longue sent intéresser.”

Marcel shook her head. “That’s so far away, Aurelle.”

Aurelle shrugged and walked on. We followed.

The next music that filled the night was percussion…congas, bongos, other instruments I didn’t recognize. A bunch of brothers who looked like they were from Africa were throwing down on their rhythm. Aurelle was moving to the beat as she turned around and smiled at her sister.

Marcel threw up her hands and wiggled up to Aurelle. They danced together with a familiarity that only sisters who’d spent their lives dancing together can know. Their moves reminded me of the dancers I’d seen at carnival in Brazil, but also of something one might see in Africa. Their bodies moved in sensuous, sexual motion, feminine movements that must have been created at the dawn of time for one purpose. I looked around and saw that every man in the vicinity had stopped to watch.

Marcel and Aurelle moved their hips as if they were taking a lover. They moved with closed eyes and hands caressing themselves as if in a fever of passion.

They danced and smiled together, sometimes so close that their bodies nearly touched. They gazed into each other’s eyes as if the other was the object of their most erotic desires. Their faces drew closer…their lips almost touching. Aurelle flicked out her tongue, licked her full, sensuous lips. Just a little closer…

The crowd watched in hushed anticipation…

And then the sisters danced away from each other, laughing the way they must have laughed when they were little girls. The spell was broken. The crowd moved on.

———-

We walked back to my hotel, where Aurelle had left her car. After we’d said our “nice meeting yous” and then our goodbyes Aurelle said to Marcel, “Our flight is at four-thirty. Don’t forget, Marcel.” Then she gave me a sly smile and said, “And don’t let Lucas keep you here, no matter how good he is.”

I took Marcel back up to my suite. We finished off her uncle’s wine and united our bodies again. She was so amazing. Kidnapping did cross my mind.

I fell asleep with Marcel wrapped tightly in my arms. I dreamed of water. A lot of water. I woke up in the middle of the night, gasping.

I took a flight out of New Orleans back to New Jersey the next day.

———-

Long Branch, New Jersey
The Cutting Edge Salon
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Afternoon

“I don’t know why in the hell anybody would build a city at the bottom of a bowl with the damn ocean sitting at the rim,” Freddie said. “To hell with a levee. They been asking for trouble since day one, if you ask me. Why the hell do you build a city at the bottom of a bowl?”

I was sitting in Freddie’s chair as he cut my hair. Everybody in the salon had their eyes glued to the television screen, looking at the devastation Hurricane Katrina had delivered to New Orleans. The city was underwater. Too many people had tried to evacuate too late. Hundreds were dead, maybe thousands. Nobody would know how many for weeks, maybe months, until everyone was accounted for, dead or alive. The talking heads on the news were already trying to figure out who was most to blame.

I wondered about Sherry Nichols. I wondered if she’d had the good sense to leave her precious house and go to safety. No doubt her daughter would have tried to convince her to go.

I’d been skeptical about Marcel’s sister’s prediction when the so-called experts were saying otherwise. But that dream I had while I held Marcel in my arms convinced me to leave New Orleans. I’m not necessarily superstitious or a believer in signs, but that dream hit me hard. Maybe it was that wine. Or maybe it was because Marcel was so close to me that night…and she was Aurelle’s sister. I don’t know. But we are descendants of Africa. And our ancestors believed in some strange things. They believed for a reason.

Who am I to question?

© 18 May 2009
The Black