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Power (Black Paint rewritten)

Back around fourteen years ago, I'd just gotten a job at this P. I. agency. Sounds glamorous, huh? I was a lower level manager. P. I.s need management just like everyone else. More than usual, tell the truth. So while the guys went out and did things like trailing husbands to their secretary's apartment, I'd sit behind a desk and do paperwork.

So picture it, all right? Back then I was just as hefty as I am now, but had more hair, and darker. Dressed in, oh, probably a ratty business suit with a tie half undone. Crouched behind my desk in my shabby little office. And this girl walked by my door.

She was... you know how at a party, there's all those good looking girls that you've got little chance with, but then there's this one girl that's way out of everyone's league? At a party full of those girls, that one would be... yeah. More than just looks. Her whole attitude screamed, "You'd sell your soul to have me, but you'll never get the chance."

So I saw her go by, and something deep in my heart went, "That's her. That's my other half," and all that other romantic stuff you see in the movies. Which just goes to show you that in a chess game between your heart and a retarded chimpanzee you should always bet on the chimp.

She was out of sight before I got to the door.

Later on, I talked to one of the guys I knew vaguely around the office. I tried to keep it all casual, but he saw through me. He told me, "Look, man. You stay away from her. I mean it." I kept at him, and kept at him, and eventually he broke down enough to tell me her name was Emily, and she did acting jobs for the agency, like finding out for a wife if her husband would cheat on her given the chance. So far, with Emily, the answer'd always been yes. He told me about all the divorces that have come behind her. I think he meant it as a warning. I thanked him.

So for a while I kept seeing her walk by my office. She didn't come in regular, just when the boss decided he needed her services, but I have... had it bad enough that I started to pay attention to the sound of footsteps walking down the hallway outside, just in case it turned out to be the *click* of high heels, so I could be looking up when she walked by. I made elaborate fantasies about her, but somehow, they all seemed to end when she took off the last of her clothing. Even in my dreams I couldn't make any headway with her beyond that.

One day, though, after months of this, I psyched myself up. I told myself that next time I saw her I would ask her out. I told myself that other guys were probably too intimidated to say anything, and that I had at least half a chance. She might even have been impressed with my balls. So I waited for the moment.

Naturally, that was one of the slow time, and Emily didn't show up for a couple weeks. I'd almost lost my nerve again when I heard her start to come up the hall. So I got to my feet, stumbled to the door, and when she walked by, I cleared my throat.

She ignored me completely. She kept walking down the hallway. After a moment, I returned to my desk. When I was about to get back to work, I heard the *click*ing stop. Then I heard it again, getting louder. Then I saw her standing in the doorway.

That day, she was wearing a dress, something flowy and half seethrough. She sashayed up to the desk, and leaned forward a bit. Her neckline fell forward, and I could look down it and see, if I wanted, her belly button. I was looking a bit upward from that. No bra. I didn't even think she was wearing any panties. And she said, in a husky voice, "Like what you see?"

I tried to tell her yes, but it kind of got caught in my throat, and came out as, "Guck!"

And she said, sweetly, "Well, take a good, long look now, because the only chance you'd ever have with me is if you killed me and fucked the corpse, you moronic, limp-dicked cocksucking, pathetic mound of flesh."

She went on like that for a while, really taking me apart, telling me about myself in a way that made me out to be the most loathesome thing on the planet. And all the while she was telling me why I would never have any chance with her, never have any chance with a woman that wasn't inflatable, she was leaning forward, showing me exactly what I would never be able to touch. Shifted a bit to give me a better view, in fact. No panties. I could see her nipples hardening as she talked.

Eventually, she paused. I looked up at her face, hoping she had finished, and she gave me a long, slow smile before she did.

"Now I'm going to turn, and I'm going to walk away. You'll tell yourself that you hate me, and you'll go home tonight to your empty apartment. And then, lying in bed, you'll masturbate while fantasizing about me, and you'll come harder than you ever have before. And you'll remember me until the day you die."

And then she walked out.

She was right, too. To the word.

So I quit the job there. Couldn't stay around where that had happened, not when she could come by the door again any time. Moved halfway across the country, in fact. I tried, basically, to leave my whole life there behind.

I met this girl, after I moved, Wanda. She wasn't big on looks, and is more than a bit fat, but she loved me. I told her I loved her. I told her anything I could to get into her pants, just to prove to myself that Emily had been wrong, that I could get a woman interested in me. I thought about Emily as I fucked her. After that, I was less interested in proving my manhood with her. Once we found the baby was coming, though, we settled in nicely. We got married in church. Her belly wasn't showing much more than the rest of her, but everyone knew.

I got a job as financial manager at a small corporation. Not at the top, but not at the bottom, either. The small corporation struck it big all of a sudden, and lots of money came in, and some of it trickled my way. Wanda and I put some money down on a house. Clara, that's my daughter, toddled around it, waving her arms in the air.

So seven years passed since the first time I met Emily. I was sitting in this restaurant, a fancy place, hundred dollars a plate. I was supposed to be meeting a client, who I would hopefully be talking into an investment deal that would make my company a lot of money and possibly him some as well. He was a bit late, and I was reading over the wine list, looking for something that would get him as drunk as possible without his noticing. I glanced up from it when a waiter walked by, and I saw Emily.

She was at a table halfway across the restaurant. There was an oldish guy sitting across from her, and whatever she was saying to him was making him older, and older, and older. After a bit, he stumbled to his feet and out the door. She smiled brilliantly and turned to her menu.

I'd had new fantasies about her in the intervening time. They tended to start off with me saying, back to her, the same kinds of thing she had said to me, and me watching her crumple. And they tended to finish with me, and her, and her removing the last of her clothing. I hadn't known whether she'd remember me or not. Sometimes she'd have tormented herself about what she'd done to me. Sometimes she'd laugh about it to herself late at night. Sometimes it hadn't been important enough to her for it to register with her. So, in a way, I was kind of prepared for the situation. I had plans for what to say, and somehow had gotten enough self respect that I went over to her table to say them to her. I cleared my throat.

And she looked up, ran her eyes over me, and said, sweetly, "Hi, handsome. Buy a girl dinner?"

And I said, "Guck!"

I sat down, and we fell to talking. I didn't tell her we'd met before. She hung on my every word, and nodded in all the right places, and looked me right in the eyes, and basically made all the right moves to make sure that I wasn't paying attention to anything but her. When the client actually showed up, I blew him off. After dinner, she gave me her phone number.

I called her the next night, from a payphone down the street from my house.

We went out a lot, going to a lot of nice restaurants, and somehow the nicer the restaurants were the more revealing her clothing was, and it was a short step from that to gifts, and from gifts to expensive gifts, and finally I gave her a diamond necklace that I couldn't afford, or at least, not that _and_ the mortgage payment. It didn't matter, though, I told myself. She'd changed. I still hated her, somehow, but I hated myself, too, so that was all right.

So suddenly we were in a sleazy motel room, and she was removing the last of her clothing, and she still wasn't wearing any underwear. And she looked at me, and said, "Like what you see?"

And I said, "Yeah."

And she said, sweetly, "Good, because you're still a moronic limp-dicked cocksucking pathetic mound of flesh, and your chances with me are still less than nothing, and this look is going to have to last you for another seven years."

And she turned to get her clothes.

She left after that. I remember sitting there for a long time staring at my hands. Eventually I scurried out without paying for the room.

My marriage went through a rough time for a while, but that was all right, we survived. We had to move out of the house Clara liked so much, though. I never told Wanda that I kept comparing her to Emily, and that she came up so short by comparison.

I don't know why Emily did it. I may never know. I think she's a user, that she takes guys for all they're worth and then moves on. Why she needs to destroy what she doesn't want to use any more, though, is beyond me.

But the reason I'm telling you all this, the reason it's been so much on my mind, that I need to get it off my chest to a total stranger I met in a bar, is that that happened seven years ago, like I said. And so I keep thinking I see her, every time I look around, every time someone knocks on my door. So I keep wondering.

What am I going to do if she shows up?

...What am I going to do if she doesn't show up?