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  "Yeah, well, when I woke up, I was on the couch with all my clothes on."

  "The sexless innkeeper!"

  "Yeah."

  "She's a homeless nudist. That's still not bad, all in all."

  The door opened and Sam hurried up and got off the phone. The woman was still standing there, only in her birthday suit, with a complete lack of self-awareness that seemed baffling. Not that he did it with Paula with all the covers on, or anything, but Sam had never been around a woman that walked up to him in the buff for a first meeting. "Can I help you?" Was all he managed to say, only realizing thereafter that this was the mandatory greeting for certain minimum wage employees at certain large retail conglomerates.

  "Yeah." She said. "I've got this feeling right here." She rubbed her stomach, which was thin and flat, "And it’s like I need something...I mean it hurts but it doesn’t really hurt, and I don’t know what it could be, anyway."

  "Are you hungry?" He asked.

  "What?"

  "I mean, do you need to eat something."

  "Yeah!" She smiled. "Yeah eat, that's totally it."

  Sam got up and checked the fridge again. Besides the carton where the case of last night’s beer had stood at one time, and the now empty orange juice container, there was nothing else which looked even remotely consumable. "Were going to have to go out." He said.

  "That’s great!" The girl said, with a smile, and as he was going to the door, grabbing his keys, he realized she was still naked.

  "Jesus, no." Sam put his hands up and she bumped into him, tits first, still naked and smiling. There was uncomfortable movement in his groin as this happened, and he was close enough to smell her perfume. Or lean in and kiss her, if that was what he intended.

  "I mean." Sam stammered. "You should, probably, uh, get dressed." She nodded, but didn’t move. Sam went back to the bedroom, and looked around. "Did you, uh, leave your stuff her anyplace?"

  "I don’t have any stuff." She said, and a cold shiver ran down the back of Sam's spine. Not have any stuff? What the hell had he gotten himself into, the other night, a refugee from the nut ward? Not a bad looking one at that, but still, when he looked back at the girl she was still smiling and standing there as beautiful as anyone he had ever laid eyes on.

  "I guess." He said. "I guess we can work it out."

  At certain points when Paula didn’t feel like giving a shit she had worn Sam's old workout clothes, for some reason or another, just a pair of mesh basketball shorts and a Cleveland Browns t-shirt. The new girl still looked good, if more than a little bummy. Sam drove them to Waffle House, and man, could she eat, a big difference of Paula's picking at her plate like a bird. The mystery woman packed down a grand slam breakfast in quick order, and let out a small belch that was surprisingly ladylike, after which she covered her mouth and made a little O face of embarrassment, and laughed, and Bill found himself thinking how he could get used to that laugh.

  "Look." He said, "I didn’t catch your name. I mean, uh, earlier."

  "I'm Lena." She said, and another chill ran down Sam's back, the same as earlier.

  "Okay." He shook his head.

  "And your Sam." Lena told him, eating a French fry in a manner that could possibly been categorized as seductive.

  "My memory is like, a little foggy." Sam said.

  "Mine too!"

  "I mean, I was drinking, like, a lot last night."

  "I'm drinking right now!" Lena said. "I'm drinking this coke."

  "Did we meet, I mean, did I like, go out somewhere, and meet you?" Bill asked.

  Lena shook her head. "We met at your place?"

  Sam laughed, more nervous than before. "How is that possible?" And Lena shrugged her shoulders. "I mean, did you come over...I mean, was more than one person there..."

  Lena shook her head again, and said nothing. On the way out of the diner Sam paid the check and the waitress told him "If your girlfriend wants to eat in here again, tell her to put some shoes on."

  There was a verifiable need for shoes, after the diner, as well as female clothing of all kind, so Lena and Sam went to the mall. Malls were something that Southern California did much better than central Ohio, as far as Sam could see, anyway. The central Chillicothe mall back home was just an L shape hallway filled with the few vendors left who hadn’t gone someplace else for greener pastures. With every few steps you would past a vacant reminder of some store in the past that had meant to succeed, but hadn’t.

  Santa Monica mall was full and bustling. Especially now, on the weekend, with all the teenagers out and about looking for things to do. There were multiple tiers of stores, from every price range you could think of, even a few aimed at real adults. The gentle sun glazed in from the skylights overhead and gave the entire scene an air of false perfection, perfectly plastic and manufactured.

  "Where do you want to go?" Sam asked.

  "Wherever you want." Lena smiled, and said. "This should be fun."

  And it was, although Sam hated to admit it. Lena laughed and sampled a dozen different outfits from youth inspired retailers, and Sam ended up buying more than a few of them. It was something he had been denied for so long with Paula, who would only frequent the Salvation Army, or like-minded thrift shops. Watching Lena try on clothes from American Eagle, Hollister, Abercrombie, with more than a few boner inspiring selections among them, things tight or low or high that accentuated just how perfect she really was, all in all, made him happy. And yes, when they made their way to Victoria's secret, he picked out her underwear. It was mostly all thongs, the sheerest, least substantial undergarment he could think of, but she asked him, dammit, and wasn’t he supposed to end up having fun with this?

  The day continued with the pair of them scarfing down burgers and chili cheese fries at the food court. Some sort of manufactured pop song in a major chord played over the loud speakers while the video of the singer played on flat screen televisions set up on posts nearby. Again Sam ended up comparing it to his ex, the sort of thing she would dismiss out of hand, but the tune was a little bit catchy, more than a little bit, anyway, and wasn’t that the whole point of music? He laughed out loud when Lena did a little dance maneuver with her hands, it was just so cute and funny at the same time, even while her cheeks were bulging out a little from manufactured food product.

  "You like this song?" He asked.

  "I’ve never heard it before." Lena said. "Do you like it."

  "Yeah." Sam said. "It’s okay. I wouldn’t buy the album."

  "What sort of music would you buy?" Lena asked.

  "The great stuff." Sam said. "But I would probably just download it, first."

  "What’s downloading?" Lena asked. And the conversation deteriorated from there.

  They drove back to Sam's condo and Lena just sat there, on the couch, looking great in her new clothes but other than that, every bit the lonely pet, so much so to the point that Sam put on the television so she wouldn’t get lonely. He wanted to do....well, there were things he wanted to do, but he didn’t want to do them yet. The fact of the matter was that Sam had never been incredibly assertive when it came to relationships. This was the moment like any other moment, with her sitting in one corner, and him in another. She got up, and looked out the sliding glass window at the beach beyond.

  "It’s beautiful." She said. From his point of view, seeing where her shorts bunched up in back in just the right manner, Sam couldn’t disagree. In that moment he felt brave, and walked close behind her, turning her around, so he could smell the way her shampoo was in her auburn hair, and kissed her. In the manner of most the kisses he had it started out fairly chaste, a movement of lips, and progressed naturally from there. When they broke off she asked him, "Can we go to the beach?"

  "Hang on." Sam said, and inspired, he hurried over to the laptop and wrote

  She loved oral sex. Not the receiving as much as the giving, the act itself, and seemed to know exactly how to pleasure a man to the point of release, before bringing him there,
as many times as he would physically let her.

  Fifteen minutes later he was in bed, and stunned with the latest turn of events.

  There had been no conversation between the two of them. He had simply typed the words and she had responded, somehow, by giving him exactly what he had written. What he had wanted, deep down, really, just by staring at her. And she had done it more than once, waiting for him to recover, frantic, impatiently wanting more of his cock until he was really, really tired of it, which was something he could never admit in public to another male, and Lena was getting almost frantic in her efforts, until a fit of inspiration caused Sam to ran to the computer and type the words

  Lena fell asleep

  Which caused her to pass out right there in the hallway, chasing him down with a thin trail of what might have been his cum. Sam picked her up gently and carried her back to his bed, where she continued to snore peacefully. Then he sat in his chair and stared at the computer screen, at the words he had already written and tried to think about what he should do next.

  He was in complete control of another human being. The evidence was there to support the fact. He had used this control for a very base purpose, that any sufficiently moral person would have questioned, and any twenty-something frat pledge would have high-fived. He felt both good and guilty about the way these events had occurred. It was certainly not something he had experienced before in his life. There was a knock at the door and Sam grabbed a pair of blue jeans from the floor. When he opened it was Jesse.

  "Hey dude." Jesse grinned. "Mystery chick still here?"

  "She's asleep."

  "Oh shit." Jesse mock whispered. "Did you just get laid?"

  "I don’t want..."

  "You did." Jesse put up his fist for a bump. "You totally did just get laid."

  There was a flash of anger in Sam at the way Jesse put things, in his blunt, frat boy musings. When this dissipated he offered, "She's asleep. Let’s talk on the beach."

  It was almost exactly like the previous day, the two of them on the beach near the boardwalk, except everything had changed. Sam explained to Jesse a version of events, a modified version, and Jesse asked "Do you think she's a groupie?"

  "What, like rock stars and..."

  "Yeah. But she's into books. And she read the book, maybe?"

  "Have you ever been to one of my readings?"

  "No. What are..."

  "You know when I'm signing books?"

  "Yeah."

  "Okay, sometimes I'm at a thing like that, and they want me to read a chapter of the book or whatever."

  "Alright."

  "That’s a reading."

  "I get it."

  "So anyway, at these readings you've never been to, the audience is populated almost entirely by males."

  "But I thought you said that mostly chicks read books."

  "It is a fact that the reading public in America is tilted female."

  "So, what’s up?"

  "The way I see it, Chicks read chick books."

  "That's a little stereotypical."

  "Have you ever read a romance novel?'

  "No..."

  "There you go. Romance novels are the bestselling thing on the book market. Chicks read them. QED."

  Jesse looked pensive. "You know." He said. "One of the unspoken benefits, the supposed unspoken benefits of being in the Marines, is that you’re going to get pussy because of it."

  "Does it work out that way?"

  "Not really. Most bases they stick you in, the ratio is overwhelmingly tilted against you." Jesse held his hand out and tilted it to signify imbalance. "That’s what really matters, man, when it comes to the dating scene. The ratio of men to women and how it effects your life altogether."

  "You think that’s true?" Sam asked.

  "I'll put it to you this way." Jesse said. "A new bitch gets imported to a small town just outside a Marine base. And at first she goes out into town, she's wearing nice clothes, jewelry, and makeup. After a month or so, she's wearing sweatpants and her hairs fucked up. Why? Because the ratio is overwhelmingly in her favor. Because she doesn’t have to try that hard, or at all, really."

  "I guess it would be worse." Sam said. "For the chicks actually in the Marines, right?"

  Jesse laughed. "We called them Wookies." He said.

  "That bad?"

  "I'll leave it at that." He shook his head. "I'm getting away from the point."

  "I wasn’t aware there was one."

  "No, look dude, the point is, is that I never really got that much pussy from just being in the Marines. And no one I knew did, really, either. So I guess I was living vicariously through you and your experiences,"

  "My supposed experiences..."

  "Right. But back to what we were saying, you've got a chick that will do whatever you want."

  "Yes."

  "Including sex stuff."

  "Yes."

  Behind them Lena was smiling and waving, wearing a new bikini from their shopping trip at the mall. Jesse smiled and waved back. "Where I'm sitting at, dude?" He said. "I'd say you have a male obligation to explore this as much as possible. And if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me. And then tell me all the details."

  For the next few days, Sam wrote Lena.

  He did it experimentally, for the most part. He would try out an attribute, and refine it, and if it didn’t succeed he would erase it or write the opposite. For example Sam would be playing video games, and Lena would ask, "What’s that?" And he would hurry over to the keyboard and write

  Lena had an interest in video games

  And suddenly she would pick up the PlayStation controller, and fumble around Call of Duty, mostly running into a corner and shooting at the empty open sky. So Sam would scrap that and write

  Lena had great skill at first person shooter video games

  And just like that, Lena would become addicted to the PS4, staying up all night, and hogging the controller. This was less attractive then the first option, so Sam would go back to the laptop and write

  Lena had no interest in video games, but did not begrudge mine

  And that seemed to be the best of both worlds. But with everything Lena, there was no perfection. No happy middle ground. The pair of them would be talking, and Sam would ask Lena, "What do you want to do with life?" A perfectly normal question for a twenty-something, he thought anyway, and the kind of thing that would have set Paula happily babbling away for hours. But Lena would only get nervous and say "Nothing." And Sam would realize that he needed to write Lena some life goals. But it was harder to do then he thought. Sam would think about writing that Lena loved art, loved to paint. Only then he thought about Paula, and how artsy fartsy that bitch was. Sam would think about writing that Lena wanted to get her college degree, only there was the ugly problem that he had created her out of thin air, and any college would want some sort of documentation on her earlier life, such as a driver’s license and social security card, or maybe even, horror of horrors, a birth certificate. And so that was out of the question. Which in the end, led to a question of money. The money was running out.

  Sam had moved to California on the sort of a spur of the moment whim that takes years to ferment. He paid off the first year lease on his condo, and bought a fairly reasonable Japanese car, something almost new. With the advance on his second book he was able to live comfortably for a while. But a while passed, like all measures of time, and Sam's bank account was getting thin. One good thing, possibly the only good thing Paula brought to the relationship was an assistance of paying for things, every now and again. Lena couldn’t pay for anything. Or could she?

  An ugly thought formed in his head, how to make money. She was the sexiest woman Sam had ever met, personally. The kind of natural sexy that comes in a girl’s next door type of look. And the sex. She would do whatever he asked, more accurately, whatever he wrote down. There were ways he could use that. A surge of jealousy sprung up, at the idea of strange hands on Lena. On his girl.<
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  He pushed those feelings down, and tried to think.

  The next problem he had with Lena was trying to talk with her. He could make her like a subject, like politics, but he couldn’t make her knowledgeable on the matter. He would try to talk with her about something that interested him, and she would cock her head to the side like a puppy, and ask, "What’s that?" This would infuriate him, so he would write on his laptop

  Lena would never, ever, cock her head to the side like a puppy

  And follow up that command with a detailed report about what exactly Lena would know about a certain situation. For a little while, Sam tried to simply copy/paste data from Wikipedia about subjects into what he was now thinking of as the Lena file, but that would cause her to simply spout out the data non-sequiter whenever the subject was broached. And she could, and would, learn on her own, or possess vast tracts of knowledge if he simply typed something vague enough. It was a mystery to him how the entire thing worked, he only could tell that it was working. He laughed sometimes when he thought of how he had overcome his writers block; all he had to do was write a person.

  Later in the week his agent called him, seemingly out of the blue, and told him that some executive from the studio wanted to meet with him later that week. The agent sounded excited, and told him it had good prospects for "working in the industry" whatever the hell that meant. What it meant for Sam was driving for several hours back to Los Angeles. To his astonishment Lena asked to come along, and then he remembered that she was not Paula, and did not resent his success in any way. Or rather, that she would not, unless he wrote that she did so. The temperature was an even seventy-two degrees the entire way and the smog was light all the way into the city.