Bill sat on the sofa at the end closest to her.
“You don’t have to worry about anything,” Millie said. “Chloe let me know specifically that she would make sure to cover your ass.”
“Let’s have that drink,” Bill said.
Because they were close enough from the way they were sitting, she in the arm chair nearest the sofa, he on the sofa closest to her, Millie kicked off one of her slippers and put her foot up in Bill’s lap almost but not quite right there. Settled, she wiggled her toes for him and as she did this she showed him her hands.
“I know you like purple. So, you like?”
“If you know I like it, then you know I like.”
“How much?” She flattened the foot some and rubbed him with it.
“That much,” Bill said.
“That much a lot?”
“That much is more than a lot.” Bill, already roused, looked at Millie. “Don’t start something you aren’t ready to handle. Now get me that drink and take off that other shoe too.”
“That all you want me to take off?”
“Take off what you want.”
Millie stood. The bottle was on the table there along with two glasses. She bent down and kissed Bill before she went to the bottle, and when she turned Bill reached up the back of her dress and helped himself to a full feel of her. Millie stayed still for him, spread her legs a touch so he could move his hand where he wanted.
“What makes you think I’m not ready for anything you want to throw at me? What makes you think I can’t handle whatever you want to do to me?”
“That what you want?”
“What?”
“Anything and everything.”
“That’s exactly what I want. What I been hoping for.”
Bill slapped her butt, not hard, rather friendly actually. “Get the drinks,” he said.
Millie kicked off her other shoe and padded barefoot on the throw rug to the table. She poured two glasses half full with bourbon.
“I don’t usually drink bourbon,” she said.
“What do you like?”
“White wine. You?”
“I like bourbon but I prefer gin or vodka. And I do like white wine.”
“You do drugs?”
“You mean like smoke weed?”
“Yeah.” She faced him now and came close with the drinks.
“Not at work, not until I’m off probation and sure I’m not getting caught. If I’m gonna get high here, I’ll do it before I come into the hotel.”
Millie handed Bill his glass and stood before him. They didn’t say anything. They waved their glasses in the air as a kind of toast and then sipped at the liquor. She stayed where she was, stood right before Bill letting him look up at her as she stood there.
He didn’t do anything at first. He sipped the bourbon, sipped it a second time, thought.
Wrong-think came to mind first. First thought with the barefoot and ready beauty before him was to remember how he had wasted steeped deep in wrong-think what should have been a perfect morning with his wife and then being home alone after she had left for work. Alcohol led him to wrong-think. Girls led him, a married man, to wrong-think. What had happened to him in his life thus far led him to wrong-think. Worst of all, wrong-think led to more wrong-think and all the wrong-think was still there in him as he sat on the sofa in this place he knew on so many levels he should never have been in in the first place.
Better to be with Beverly in the staircase, right? He asked himself this as he sat there. You get both, his inner voice told him now. They owe it to you.
For the life of him he couldn’t say who they were. Maybe sober and all alone he might have told himself that no one owed him anything no matter what had happened in his life, no matter what happens in his life.
