Seeds of Fear

HANDYMAN Jeff Gelb

Rob Parvis overheard snippets of their conversation from three barstools down, and decided to move closer. As he edged past the other men and women seated around the bar, he was thankful for its no- smoking rule. It kept the bar from becoming too noisy or crowded, and seemed to bring in a better clientele. His kind of clientele: attractive, single, horny women.

He placed his Cabernet on the glass countertop, which was lit from beneath by neon, giving nearby patrons unusual flesh hues. The women he was spying on were both attractive. The shorter one was a dirty blonde with a tomato face, a cute smile, and small breasts, dressed in a conservative white silk blouse and drawstring pants. The taller one next to her was a brunette with a strong chinline, thin eyebrows, which he disliked, and who also, he noted, had small breasts, concealed under a leotard top tucked into blue jeans. He dubbed them the Itty Bitty Tittie Committee as he leaned closer to hear more.

"I haven't been laid in years," the blonde com plained. "But it's so scary out there these days, I just can't see picking up just any guy. I'm going crazy!"

"What do you mean, 'going'?" Her friend laughed.

The blonde ignored her. "You're better off married, Vickie, even if you're not getting along with Jack right now."

Her friend answered, something Rob couldn't hear, and then they both laughed. Rob waited till the laughter died down before handing the blonde his business card.

"What's this?" she asked, straining as she read it aloud by the room's dim light. " 'The Handyman — Your Sexual Stand-In. No money, no diseases, no questions. One hundred percent satisfaction.'" She looked at the card for a moment and burst out laughing.

"You're kidding, right?" she managed between chuckles. "Sounds too good to be true."

"What an opening line!" the brunette said, clucking her tongue in obvious disapproval.

But the blonde extended her hand to him, noticing his perfectly polished nails. "Christine Kent," she announced. "You must have heard me complaining. I guess I should be embarrassed, but fuck it, it's just so depressing these days, you know?"

"Chris!" Vickie was surprised by her friend's can dor with this stranger. "Either you two know each other, or you have had too much to drink, girl!"

"Neither," Rob said, making sure they had to lean in closer to him to catch his words. Baiting the hook, he thought, using his best radio voice to snag their attention. "I couldn't help overhearing Christine's complaint, and I decided to offer her my services."

Vickie shook her head. "Sorry, Charlie, we're not looking for a gigolo. Nice try, though."

Chris placed a hand on her friend's shoulder. "Speak for yourself," she said. "Your card says no money." She checked the card again and smiled as she spoke his name: "Rob, Is that false advertising?"

He smiled. "Not at all. You might just say I'm a good Samaritan, offering my unique services to a select group of people like yourself."

Vickie interrupted. "Chris, you don't know any thing about this guy."

"And he doesn't know anything about me."

"But he's not even your type," Vickie argued, in obvious disregard of Rob's presence. "You can do better."

Chris looked over the man who'd given her his business card. It was true he was no GQ model. His silk shirt was wrinkled, he wore his hair in an out-of- date ponytail (and it didn't look particularly clean, either), and there was some sort of stain on his jacket collar. Still, she'd slept with worse — an awfully long time ago, she reminded herself. Finally she answered her friend, "That's where you're wrong, Vickie. I think he's just my type."

Vickie grabbed Chris by the arm. "Will you excuse us a moment, Mr. Studley Do-Right?" Without awaiting his response, she grabbed her girlfriend brusquely and walked out of Jay's earshot. He watched them argue back and forth, straining in vain to hear their words. He smiled as Chris turned to him at one point and winked. Finally they returned to his side.

"So what's the catch, Rob?" Chris asked, exaggerating his name as if he were famous. "Do you have six months to live, a girlfriend you want to piss off, or are you a porn film producer?"

He shrugged. "None of the above. I just take the stress and games out of finding a partner for the night." He took a sip of his wine. "You'd be surprised how many women welcome my offer with relief. It's sex with no strings attached. Tomorrow morning, we've both gotten something we want and we say good-bye, satisfied and with no regrets."

"As easy as that?" she said as she reached for her glass of cranberry juice and vodka.

"As easy as that." He placed a hand over hers as she grabbed the tall glass like a cock. He squeezed her hand softly and she gasped. The physical contact was electric.

"I'm going to powder my nose," she said. "You get the car and I'll meet you outside."

As they entered his apartment, he turned on a light switch that controlled not only the lighting but his CD player, which immediately fired up a Yanni CD at a comfortable background level.

"Ooh — you do know the way to a woman's heart, don't you?" Christine cooed as she allowed herself to be led to his living room. Privately she winced; actually, she hated this sort of music. She glanced around at his apartment. It was drab, dark, and messy. It didn't look to her as if Rob Parvis had thought he was going to get lucky tonight.

"Remember the rules." She spoke to his back as he retrieved a bottle of white wine from his refrigerator. "You show me the doctor's note you claim to have. I want to know the person I'm climbing into the sack with isn't dangerous."

"Me too," he laughed as he showed her a computer printout of negative HIV blood test results that was indeed dated that day.

"Fair enough," she breathed as she allowed herself to stroke the front of his trousers.

"And you?" he asked.

She shrugged. "You'll have to take your chances. You heard me — I haven't been laid in years. It would be pretty hard to catch anything.." Her voice trailed off.

"Why no action?" he asked, massaging her shoulders and allowing his hands to drop lightly to her small breasts, where he traced her nipples through the silk blouse.

She whispered, "You said no questions, right? Let's just fuck."

He raised his hands in submission. "Right you are." He popped the cork out of the bottle. "It's a Vouvray — a sweet French wine. I find it tastes especially good when licked off nipples."

She shuddered at the statement. It had been so long.

He unbuttoned her blouse, tugged it out of her pants, and tossed it on the floor. He gently guided her backwards to his couch, where she sat back against a cushion and allowed him to dribble the golden liquid on her tiny areolas. Then he lowered his head and slowly licked at the dark bumps of flesh, encircling one with his mouth and then sucking at it until it had grown twice its normal size. Chris sighed with pleasure and grabbed at his crotch, where she felt a medium-sized bulge. She was momentarily disappointed he wasn't even bigger, but she enjoyed the feel of a man's dick in her hands nonetheless.

He continued to lick at her nipples, gently biting them and then sucking, kneading her breasts like bread dough beneath his strong fingers.

By this time she'd slipped his pants down to his knees and was pleased to find he was wearing no underwear. She pushed him off her and made him sit down so she could pay attention to his erection. She smiled as she noticed the precoital fluid dribbling down his throbbing dick; it looked as if he hadn't gotten any in a while either.

She decided to see if she could still throat; it was a talent she'd honed over the years, and she hoped she could still control her gag reflex. She took the head of his dick into her mouth and he squirmed in obvious pleasure. She kept going and was thrilled to discover that throating was almost like riding a bicycle. Once learned.

He bucked like a bronco as she tickled his balls with one hand while tweaking his nipples with the other, throating him at the same time. He was already gasping for air like a fish out of water, and before she knew it, she felt his hot come spurting down her throat. She sucked him bone-dry, disconnected her face from his genitals, and smiled at him, a thin line of come dribbling down her chin.

"Boy, you were eager for some beaver!" she chided playfully. But he turned away from her. "Hey, what's wrong?" she asked.

"I.. didn't expect to come so fast. Sorry."

"I thought you said you got sex all the time. Maybe your card trick doesn't work so well after all."

He turned back to face her and she noticed his face was red. Studley Do-Right was embarrassed, she thought with amusement.

"It's not that, it's just. well, I didn't get to — you know — get you off."

"So who's stopping you?" She pulled the drawstring and her pants slid noiselessly to the floor. She stepped out of them and glared at him defiantly, allowing him to notice that she too had neglected to wear underwear that evening.

He gasped at her bare beauty and at his first-ever view of shaved pussy. He approached her slowly, trembling slightly, and finally allowed his hand to caress the soft mound of skin directly above her vagina, rubbing his hand up and down, exploring her innermost secrets with his eager fingers, slipping one, then two deep inside her. She stood as still as a statue as he finger-fucked her and he kissed her breasts while pushing his fingers in and out of her vagina. Then he replaced them with his again engorged dick.

She moaned as he pushed into her and they started a love dance, still standing while moving slowly around the small living room, their every movement ecstasy to her supersensitive pussy. Despite her own preferences, she felt herself on the verge of coming. All too soon she was forced to allow herself to experience a thunderous orgasm while still standing and locked in his sexual embrace. The climax was better than she remembered, and a thousand times better than the orgasms she'd given herself over the years as she waited for the chance to fuck a man again.

Finally her orgasm ended and she disengaged from him and fell back on the couch, catching her breath. He lay down next to her. She looked around lazily until her eyes spotted an ashtray.

"Oh God, you smoke! I'd kill for a cigarette right now."

"No problem," Rob said, reaching to open a drawer of an end table next to the couch. He sifted through it and brought out a pack of Winstons, displacing a book from the drawer. They both watched it fall to the floor.

"Oh shit." Rob blanched as Chris read the title aloud.

'"How to Seduce Women: A Failsafe Guide for Bachelors.'" She reached down for the book, but Rob caught her arm.

"Please," he said, obvious strain in his voice. "Don't."

"Is it yours? Let me see it." She shrugged his hand off her arm with surprising strength and flipped through the book's pages.

"Oh, this is great," she said sarcastically. "This is priceless." She held the book up for him to see the page featuring the «Handyman» business card. "I don't fucking believe it! You got all this from a fucking book!" She laughed at him. "Where's the page that tells you what wine to use on nipples? Or how to do it standing up?" She threw the book down in disgust.

"I've been had," she said as she stood up and gathered her clothing. "Well, it serves me right, I guess, for being so anxious myself. I mean, I just got out today, so you can imagine how horny I was after eight years in the asylum."

Rob was quickly putting on his pants to hide an erection that had faded with embarrassment down to a dick that was smaller than he could remember having since he was in grade school. "What. what did you say? What do you mean?"

She took a deep breath of smoke into her lungs, held it for a second, and exhaled in his face. "Eight years — that's a long time to waste away. But they were convinced I was crazy for killing my boyfriend Rob." She blinked twice. "What did you say your name was?"

"R. Rob."

"Rob. Well. Of course." She thought about that for a moment, chuckled to herself, and then continued: "My Rob, he was a liar too. Told me he wasn't having an affair when he was actually fucking his secretary. Are you fucking your secretary too, Rob? Did you use the book on her too, Rob? I can't stand liars, Rob."

Slowly she placed the pack of cigarettes in her purse. "Thanks for these, Rob. You remember what I said before?"

Stunned that she'd found him out, stunned by everything she'd said, he could barely concentrate on her words, as she repeated softly, "I said I'd kill for a cigarette."

As she removed the long, razor-sharp knife from her purse, she stepped menacingly toward Rob Parvis, once a lonely, desperate bachelor, soon to be deceased.

Christine Kent and Vickie Wayne sat at the bar, sipping cranberry juice and vodkas. Chris spoke first: "First round's on me because you won the bet. How'd you know I'd kill him?"

Vickie shrugged. "It doesn't take a brain surgeon. As soon as you said his name, I knew he was a goner. I just hope you cleaned up after yourself."

"The place is spotless, I promise."

Vickie shook her head. "You really are crazy, Chris."

"That's what they said at the asylum, till I convinced them otherwise. Took eight years, though. Needless to say, I'm still horny."

As if on cue, a short, overweight, sweaty man with thick glasses in a dirty Grateful Dead T-shirt walked up to them, glass of beer in one hand, business card in the other. He handed the card to Chris.

"Oh shit," Vickie said as her friend read aloud: "'The Handyman.'"

The man nodded eagerly. "That's me. I couldn't help hearing you mention how horny you are."

Christine put up a hand to silence him. "Well. Matt," she said, exaggerating his name, "I'm sorry, but I've already read that book."

She laughed as she dropped the card into his glass of beer and turned away from the man. A look of disappointment spread across his face.

"Shit," he cursed. "I just can't get lucky."

Vickie eyed him for several seconds before responding, "Mister, you don't know just how lucky you are."