Were you hoping to read some more of my book? Is that because you suspect its trashy and full of smut? Shame on you.

“We used to come here a lot,” said Vivian, her eyes dark and imposing. “I live just a few blocks away.”

“Oh really? I had no idea. I just like the food here. Probably the best bar food outside of the city.” David forced himself to hold her gaze as he asked. “Who’s we?”

“My husband and I,” she said apathetically. “We’d come here for live music, it was a lot of fun.” She kept the same blank intense stare in her eyes but masked it now with a wide smile. “Now he doesn’t ever want to do anything but be at home with his records.”

“Is he a musician?”

“No.”

“Just a collector?”

“A debt collector.” She shook her head. “He’s spent thousands and thousands of dollars on vinyl. We have a garage and one entire room in our house that just … holds records.” As David watched, her iron resolve slipped and the smile faded from her cheeks.

David kept his stare. It was quiet at the table now, except for the song lyrics that again chimed overhead.

Are we datin’? Are we fuckin’?
Are we best friends? Are we somethin’
In between that?
I wish we never fucked, and I mean that

“And what about you?” asked David. “Do you have a room full of vinyl records for yourself?”

Vivian shook her head, a trace of a smile starting to return.

“Then what do you do for fun?”

“I go out,” she smirked.

“Oh good,” he said reassuringly. “Me too.” Her foot brushed against David’s again, less haphazardly this time.

***

It was past midnight when they left the bar. The night air now felt positively chilly. Vivian pulled her jacket tight around herself but then turned and faced him, looking down slightly from the perch of her high boots. “I had a surgery a few years ago; they had to repair an artery.” She took his hand and brought it around to her back, into the warmth of her jacket and under the lightweight fabric of her top. His fingertips found the smooth, rounded tissue of a scar that ran along the shoulder blade. He let his thumb and fingers explore the area, feeling the limit and depth of the scar as it darted under the thin bra strap that stretched taut across her soft skin.

David nodded his head to a song that was playing only in his own mind. His thoughts swam lazily in a delightful pool of alcohol and vaporized narcotics. He used his hand to pull her an inch closer to him. Or did he just step in closer while holding firmly to the base of her shoulder blade? It didn’t really matter. “It feels like you were stabbed.”

“I never thought of it like that,” she stared at him with dark eyes like cold, celestial objects. “I’ll bet you’re a good writer,” she lied. “Wanna go smoke in my car?”

He nodded slowly and said, “I’d rather go somewhere else.”

“What did you have in mind?” Her face was close to his now.

“How about a hotel?” He gave her shoulder blade a long, slow squeeze and let the tip of one of his fingers bore sharply into the little crevice that the surgery had left in the flesh of her back. She didn’t answer right away. “It doesn’t have to be sex,” he said, hoping it would be sex.

“Alright,” she said, knowing it would be sex.

“Ya?”

“Yeah.”

He pretended to choose a random hotel, and they drove their own cars to the one he knew to be the cheapest in town. They waited impatiently for the night clerk to come to the lobby desk, holding on to each other anxiously and awkwardly, both afraid to somehow lose the moment, mere steps from their destination.

“Breakfast starts at 6 a.m.,” said the clerk once he’d finally run David’s credit card.

“We won’t be here,” said David, grabbing his card back greedily along with the room key.

“Would you like a second key?”

But the two of them were already away from the desk, moving down the hallway to their room.

“I mean, do you see any luggage?” Vivian joked, giving his arm a squeeze.

“Right? Doesn’t anyone fuck at shitty hotels anymore?”

They were only four steps into the room when they tore into each other. Her hands were in his shirt, along his skin, ruffling the short hairs that lined his chest. Finding the top of his hip that poked from out of his waistline. His hand was in her hair before moving down to give her neck a firm squeeze, while his other held her firmly in place along her lower back. She pulled on him and the two of them tumbled onto the low bed and its rough beige covering.

He scrambled with his shirt. She fiddled with her belt. “I hate these fucking shoes!” he said, trying to get his laces undone quickly enough to lose his pants. He still had his socks on when he jumped back, positioning himself between her legs while he looked down at her. She wore a small black thong, and she hadn’t removed her bra. It cupped her tight round breasts, and its dark fabric showed off the pale smoothness of her skin. He craned his neck down to kiss, feeling her hips raise up to meet his own, feeling the warmth from beneath the thin fabric of her panties.

“Shit. I left the condom in the car,” he lied.

“I don’t think we need it. I haven’t been with anyone but my husband,” she lied.

He let his mouth slide down her neck, using his fingers to pry beneath her bra strap as his fingers explored her breast. “Your breasts …,” he said quietly, with his mouth close to her ear.

“What about them?”

“They’re … not good.” There was quiet in the room before they both broke into laughter. She pulled his head down still laughing and he slid back the padding of her bra to find her nipple with his lips.

“Ohhh …,” she sighed, her hand finding its way into his boxer briefs, freeing him from his fabric prison.

“Can I lick on you?” he said, his mouth muffled as it ran along her navel and hips.

“No,” she gasped. “I need you in me.”

Her thong disappeared, finding its way out of the story as he positioned himself at her opening. She clasped her fingers together behind his neck and stared up at him with dark, expectant eyes. He pushed into her.

“OH GOD!” she called.

“OH GOD!!!” he cried.

***

When they were spent, they lay together on sheets damp with sweat and impulsivity. And then he kissed her, watched her as she stood up and made her way to the bathroom, her naked ass and legs retreating from him. “You never told me what your tramp stamp is,” he called, rolling over and staring up at the ceiling.

“It’s a Japanese character. You should have figured that out.” She laughed, her head popping back from around the corner of the wall divider. “I mean, you got a pretty good look at it.”

“That’s fair.” He rolled onto his back and stared upward, wondering how it was that bad hotels always managed to have stains on their ceiling. His left hand found her discarded pants and rifled through the pockets until he’d located her vape pen again. He took a long drag from it and felt his body relax into the rough papery sheets after he finished coughing. “What does it mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just ink on my skin.”

“That’s also fair.”

She walked back to him, her naked frame accentuated somehow by her long white legs. She didn’t lay back on the bed, but instead snatched the vape from his hands and took a drag of her own with a wide, close-lipped smile. Her eyes shut. “I got it when I was really young, in my early twenties. I just liked the look of Japanese characters.”

“Technically they’re Chinese.”

“Really?” she said in mock surprise and awe. “I had no idea! I’ve just been walking around with it on my ass for the last twenty years until you explained the difference.” When he gave a begrudging laugh she added, “And you may be interested to know that Japanese kanji is written differently from traditional Chinese characters.”

“I’ll admit, I didn’t know that.”

She again adopted a look of mock amazement, then softened and shook her head. “I decided not to bother with any ‘meaning,’” she quoted the air with her fingers. “I just went by aesthetics alone.” Her eyebrows raised and her expression took the face of a frowning school teacher explaining a difficult concept to a struggling student. “That means I picked the one I thought was the most purdy, David.”

He laughed again, and she joined him. He took the pen back from her and took his turn, then coughed out his regrets. “Miss Vivian, might I ask you please, what does your purdy Kanji tattoo translate to?”

“Preposition,” she shook her head.

His face scrunched up into an aggravated look that was half exasperation and half satisfaction. “To what …,” he cocked his head to the side looking for any errors he may have missed, “does your tattoo translate when … translated,” he shrugged and laughed, “…into English?”

She took the pen back from him, took a drag, closed her eyes, and smiled wide. “Magpie,” she finally said. Then she got dressed, kissed David on the cheek, and exited into a hallway whose ceilings were also somehow filled with stains.

“Magpie,” he said to himself, watching as the stains above him took the form of lewd images of men and women in various acts of depravity.

David lay naked and awake on the bed for a long time before he finally decided to stay for the night. As he pulled the coarse brown blankets up to his waist, he found where he had tucked his phone beneath the pillow and dialed up Claire, fully aware that her phone would be on silent at this hour.

“Then why are you calling her?” he asked.

“Because I don’t want to forget it.”

When her voicemail had finally ended, David tried to temper the excitement in his voice into something resembling professional authority. “Claire,” he said, “I have an idea for a story.”

The Mischief of Magpies is cruelty free (except to its characters) and printed on 100% recycled Mormon scriptures.