Edward Lee by Room 415 Page A

nature. Flood was sales director for a company that made wireless computer components; hence, these electronics shows proved a necessity to travel out of Seattle. His firm, in fact, had achieved a cutting-edge rep in the field. He’d always been successful but never more than now. Fifty, and he was living the white-collar success story: close to a mid-six-figure salary, stock options that guaranteed a lavish retirement, waterfront home on Puget Sound. 100k in his savings account, and a Mercedes and a Cadillac.
    Yet Flood felt poor as a vagabond.
    Felicity had wed the man she’d been cheating with immediately after the divorce, so at least there was no alimony. They’d been married for ten years, and he supposed, now, that she’d cheated on him for as long. He even knew she was a gold-digger but he didn’t care (Flood had lots of gold); he simply loved her for all he was worth, her flaws, her flirting drug problems, and her lack of character, and all else. She was more beautiful than any woman he’d known, and she soon became the very seat of his desire.
    Oh, God. What a wreck my life is...
    He knew he shouldn’t think about her; Dr. Untermann warned him of such pitfalls. What had she called his disorder? “A thematic-erotic inversion, Mr. Flood. It’s a fairly commonplace sexual dysfunction. A stimulating image or situation ignites an instantaneous and very normal sexual response. But then the inversion sets in. Stimulation reminds you of your ex-wife, and your ex-wife nearly destroyed your life. Let me put it this way, Mr. Flood, in more comprehensible terms. Your married life can be likened to a car wreck. You’re a crashed car. You’re going to be in the shop for awhile.”
    Analogy notwithstanding, finally he understood, to the chagrin of his sex drive. Any woman who excited him would dig up memories of Felicity, then all bets were off.
    Shit! His cigarette had burned down in his musing, burning his fingers. He pitched it out the window and watched the ember fall five stories in total silence.
    That silence, and the darkness, seemed a comfort here. It honed off his edges. Uncaring now, he glanced down at the fourth-floor window again, spotted the ink-haired girl on hands and knees on the bed. A wide, stocky white man with a shaved head was taking her from behind, quite frenetically. He’d dropped his slacks, and as he humped her, shrugged out of his own silk shirt, a deep maroon. The bald head shined. The wide back was astonishingly hairy; it reminded Flood of a professional wrestler. Flood focused down...
    What happened next was easily discerned in spite of the distance and angle. The bald man’s head dipped down, whereupon he spat between the girl’s buttocks, then pulled his penis out—
    “Hey!” Flood could hear the girl’s sudden disapproval. “I told you you couldn’t—"

    Then a sharp yelp.
    The bald man had thumbed open her buttocks and slammed his penis into her rectum.
    He humped even more frenetically now, grasping her hips close to restrain her objection. In a moment the thrusts slowed, then stopped.
    The night air carried stray words upward, which Flood could hear with little trouble:
    “Leon! Oscar put it in my—”
    “ Damn it, Oscar! That hurts!”
    “—I told him he couldn’t put—”
    The bald man was gruffly wiping his penis off on some fabric, presumably the girl’s dress.
    “Leon! Tell Oscar not to—”
    ”Shut up, hosebag—”
    She whirled around, sitting upright on the bed. “Don’t you call me a—”
    SLAP!
    Flood flinched to what he witnessed. The bald man—Oscar, evidently—had one arm back into his silk shirt when his hand blurred. He cracked an open palm hard against her face. First, silence. Then—
    “You can’t hit me!”
    “Be quiet, Jinny,” a third voice said.
    More silence.
    Flood calculated, something he was good at. The girl’s Jinny, the bald guy Oscar. The third voice must be Leon, the black guy. Flood continued to watch and listen.
    “What