She looked hopefully into the mirror bolted to the wall behind the tiny hotel room dresser and thought she saw defeat in those once radiant eyes, the eyes that had made every man her suitor in college and now somehow sent them giggling like girls behind her back on the job, where she knew damned well they called her “stone cold.”

She had once been told she had “Betty Davis eyes,” and had smiled, but now frowned worriedly, wondering if she now had a Betty Davis face.

The crow’s feat worried her particularly. She didn’t want to put on too much foundation and crack like a smiling statue.

The makeup thing—anything more than eye shadow—had not occurred to her until that shard of glass had hit her below the left eye and she began covering it up at age 35. Over the years, the need became greater, the need for her face to keep pace with the hope for true love that still rose in her heart when some man who cared loomed like a fantasy in her mind’s eye, in those brief moments when she forgot that the world was populated by evil men, stupid boys and the rotten sluts who vied with her in the endless hunt for that one guy—out there somewhere, they had to imagine—who had a brain, a body and a heart.

“Hmm,” she frowned and her brow creased horrifically, causing her to shudder, “Body? Check! Heart? I think so, maybe. Brain? Dream on, sister. You’d have to hire him a speech therapist before you could introduce him to Mom.”

“But what a body!” she sighed, deeply, wet between the legs already as the thought of his meaty man hands enwrapping her caused her to paint on a ruby Hitler mustache instead of touch up her lip.

“Fuck,” she murmured as she touched up her lip—“Oh, yeah, that’s on the agenda. No more sucking middle-aged dicks attached to lazy, heartless pricks for Louann…”

She purred as she brushed her still-brown hair, passably lustrous with the right conditioner, with a few shots of grey, but no silver roots yet—how she dreaded that day as her hair bounced to her roundly athletic shoulders and swayed a few inches above her still perky cleavage, exposed tastefully above her low, pink jumpsuit collar.

She pouted her lips and wondered if her makeup would crack when she wrapped them around that unconcealable cock…

“You fucking slut, get it together, be gracious at the door—but not like you’re his fucking mother. Relax, already. Exhale when you open the door and smile softly.”

A mischievous smile creased her face and she looked a little witchlike, in the Russian call girl fashion, still desirable, not yet retirable, “You bitch, making the poor horny boy promise to make you guacamole—I wonder if he’ll buy a mix and fumble all over the kitchen counter or bring a ready to eat travesty from the snack aisle?”

The door knocked twice.

She scrambled for a pair of casual jean shorts, wanting to cut the most girlish figure possible.

The door knocked thrice, and her fucking nipples were popping out through the soft lace of the bra and expanding the tight jumpsuit top.

The door knocked twice, as if the knocker was losing confidence, might be turning away, might be leaving her to the dubious companionship of her Jake Steed High Speed vibrator, “Coming!”

She was in full-on girl mode, even broke protocol and did not check the peep hole to make sure it was him.

The door swung inward as she smiled demurely at the god-like figure of the grocery store box boy, still wearing the same sweat shirt, cargo shorts and sneakers, and then her eyes widened at the figure standing next to him, a shifty, middle-aged Puerto Rican in dress slacks, Hawaiian shirt, patent leather shoes and a dollar store sombrero, holding a blue stone bowl and pestle filled with avocados, lime and cilantro, and a bottle of top shelf tequila in his other hand, bowing ostentatiously and introducing himself in a New Yorican accent, as Joey stood aside grinning like a boy on Christmas morning, “Senorita, Oscar Malvida, at your service, in the name of my young friend, a rising MMA star, me, his humble trainer.”

This brought out what the guys at work always called her “Stone Cold Mode,” as she smirked at the fucking Rican confidence man, grabbed Joey by the hand and pulled him into a body-check and kiss—the kiss almost erasing the resurgent tom boy in her heart, and then nodded to the tiny kitchen and said, as condescendingly as a cartoon villainess, “Well, coach, I appreciate you helping your fighter with his food prep. But if you expect me to back his title shot I’ll have to take him through his paces first.”

With that, Louann went full-on bitch, seething that this dream date had turned into her getting played, half of a mind to shoot this Rican dog down after she got her pelvis good and numb and kicking this dumbass hillbilly to the curb…

But those huge, strong hands and dreamy, unjudging eyes, worshipping her like she was some blooming goddess when the world was young and nude, soon downed out the at first unsettling racket coming from the kitchen, where the criminal conman known as Oscar sang, danced and made dinner to the sound of very un-Mexican salsa music and drank to the occasional lip-smacking toast of, “Fuck-yeah, Holmes!”

Well, she wasn’t sure who Holmes was, but was soon intimately acquainted with Fuck-yeah. Within moments—keyed by years of astounding emptiness—the worries about who else this idiot had fucked and if he split condoms fucking gym sluts too, were pretty much driven to the back of her mind as the Florida sun burned fiercely outside her rented window and she finally experienced the manner of passionate domination she had forever dreamed of while passing meaningless moments under the bastards who had used her in her misspent youth and would use her no more…

She wasn’t due in for the briefing until tomorrow, but the phone kept beeping at her, waking her from her cocoon of safety, spooned by those Olympic hips and enwrapped in those indescribably strong hands, as her new “Joey Baby” breathed deeply through her tangled and matted hair, sound asleep after the endless hours of effort it had taken to drive all the bad realtionship baggage demons from her oft-wounded soul.

Louann felt like she had been reborn.

She lay curled in the muscle bound, man-sweat scented darkness as the sound of loud snoring came from the main room—no, it came from the bathroom off to the left.

The phone beeped again.

Louann slid out from the coziest, safest place she had ever inhabited and got dressed for work to the sounds of that creep Oscar snoring in the bathroom.

It just figured that she had to pee, and was getting too damned old to hold it—Christ, Joey, I think you bruised my kidneys—and did what needed to be done. As she sat in the dark emptying her bladder, numb from the neck down, as Oscar snored in the tub, mere feet away in the alcohol-scented dark, she received an urgent text, that the briefing had been moved up.

Within minutes she was speeding off in her smoky black Charger, soon after walking into the briefing, trying to untangle her hair as she bumped by that crude-ass Crofton, sat down next to snickering Steele—that little nerd—and sat next to Lisa, who was human at least, although married to some inexplicably fat man who stayed at home and watched the children.

Supervisory Agent McMasters greeted her with some tolerance, “Special Agent Rhimolde—and the two ATF dickheads across the table smirked lustily at her, knowing she had recently been inseminated, as such animals have a sense for such things—the investigation has accelerated and the operation is—well, on another track.”

As the video display was engaged and her supervisor said something that was hard to consider as she felt her neck, where Joey’s gloriously strong hand had pinned her down while he conquered her every doubt about her femininity, she could feel that the collar bone was slightly bruised.

“Special Agent Rhimolde, are you with us?” came her supervisor’s voice.

Startled, Louann perked up and bullshitted, “Sorry, didn’t get much sleep…sir.”

All eyes were on her, and when McMasters signaled the forensic specialist to resume the video presentation, Lisa nudged her with that asking knuckle that always meant, This married girl just has to know about your new man—is this the one?

The video feed was from the account’s office who had agreed to turn state’s evidence, the likeable Myron Epstein, an older Jewish guy she had flipped over coffee, without a word, just a wink. Vincent Piccolo, that big fat slob, who probably smelled like salami, was talking to him, seated across the desk and then made a hand signal, to which an extremely muscular man in sweat shirt and cargo shorts, the man who had fucked her for nearly eight hours—the man who had taken her woman soul and now had it imprisoned in his animalistic balls—walked around the desk, wrapped an unraveled brass coat hanger, like mom used to ruin her dresses with, around poor Myron’s neck and all but twisted his head off with it inside of ten seconds.

She had to throw up.

She stood abruptly, making some unfortunate bleat of a peep.

She was going to puke.

The room, the table, the screen, the six soulless ciphers and clueless Lisa, all looked at her like she was giving birth to an alien. She was trying hard to keep from passing out or vomiting and was not sure which would happen.

McMasters’ voice, informed by a much larger mind than the others, actually possessing intuition of a higher order—But he’s fucking happily married!—punched through the sound of the waterfall building in her ears, “Louann—can you identify the killer?”

As the room began to spin, Agent Rhimolde managed to take her room key out of her wallet and hold it out, the last sensation she felt before falling face first into the conference table being the slipping of the plastic card, representing her single moment of human bliss, through her listless fingers.

Prolific Writing by Design