Chapter 4
The Redhead, the Brunette and Me makes three
Eve. She looked tall but was only five six, five seven. She was a cliché; long hair—breast length, dirty blond, streaked with different shades but different carpet color, which I learned later, so dyed to achieve the effect. She dressed with class but when I followed her to the jewelry store, she was dressed in clothes which were two years out of style, one sleeve had a thread, tell tale signs of decay.
She was a middle daughter of the nation's royalty. Lost in the mix, she retreated to Holdingsfield. She seemed to rule that little pond for she organized and directed and established precedents. It was she who ousted my sister Sharon with a overtly casual campaign. I could not decide if she was one of my true targets or not but she appeared to be a worthy target, regardless.
She possessed the class and sophistication she was raised with . . . and with the secrecy. She fled her family, their purposes, their intentions for her, their encumbrances soon after graduation from college, a legacy of the family name with all its expectations, predictions and Calvinist determinism. Because she was not critical to their purposes her disappearance from their world was not missed or violently opposed. It was tolerated with a complacent conviction that she would eventually see the error of her ways and return to the fold, the cove of the Covingtons a she was wont to express it.
Eve appeared with them socially on occasion but they did not deign to pay any attention to her life. So they missed or ignored the fact of her husband slowly going broke, a descent which my team was intent on hurrying. Ignored with a true indifference which must have cut her in much the same way that her assault on Sharon her my sister. Life seemed curiously balanced before I intervened and I hoped my introduction into her karmic equation would not aim me at a nasty, brutish and short life as a rat when I was next reincarnated.
We steered tenants away from their properties with inducements, got their staff pregnant, exposed their gay members in the closet and hired those out of the closet away to work for us for they were routinely excellent. We robbed them of their talent along with their clients. Eve's husband had a real estate business which would have been under pressure in any case because of the economy but we made perfectly legal, though I admit costly, moves to move it along, accelerate it which I also confess was because I came to want her in the sexual way. Also, because if any of the women of Holdingsfield possessed the bearing and the comportment of a board member or even the Chairwoman herself, it was Eve Covington Sawyer. We moved on them soon after the slide began. I happened to know that they were rapidly approaching the bottom though I had not sent them the notice of eviction yet. Eve deserved a different tack, she deserved tact in fact. Nonetheless, when she asked the clerk to show her the diamond necklace, I knew she was window shopping as the surprised and eager clerk did not.
The clerk turned away and I eased in behind Eve. I placed my hands on her hips. I leaned forward and spoke in a normal voice, "That would look beautiful on your neck. Would you allow me to buy it for you?" To her credit, she did not flinch at my touch or show fright when I spoke nor was she enticed by my honest offer, false as it was.
She turned her head and said in a quiet voice, "I am married."
I chuckled deep in my chest. "So am I. You are Eve Covington. I recognize you." The clerk returned with a ruby and sapphire creation.
"That will be all. Let me look at it." Eve dismissed the woman with a voice at once gentle and uncompromising." The woman turned away and found something to occupy her attention. Eve picked it up and held each end of the strand up to me. From behind her, I reached around each side of her, took it and merely held it in front of her, not touching her at any point. My cock, however, stirred, standing this close to her. She gathered her long, blond hair and pulled out to the side, out of the way exposing the graceful line of her august neck. I fastened the stunning necklace and stepped back. She turned around.
"What do you want?" She said, any pretense of tolerance, gone.
"I am your neighbor." I said. She gave the merest acknowledgement. "I am not really married." That did get a flicker, a subtle change in the eyes.
"What are you doing here? Why are you bothering me?
"Am I bothering you? I apologize." I waited without movement, without expression.
Finally Eve nodded.
"I know about you. You ARE famous after all. I have been trying to figure out how to introduce myself without being creepy."
She nodded again and with that small motion her shield thinned a bit. "Well, I am Eve Covington." She said in a voice flush with reservation and the pleasure at being recognized. She could not hide or help it. Covington was her family name; she did not give me her married name which was Sawyer. That was encouraging.
"Can I buy you a lemonade?" I asked.
"Are you always this rude?"
"Rude?" I did not understand.