Urge to Kill

45

“So the doctor says, ‘Not only have I never seen anyone get pregnant that way, I don’t understand how it could happen.’”

Jackie Jameson’s delivery was spot on the beat, and the punch line drew a good laugh from the Say What? audience. But Jameson’s mind wasn’t completely on his work. It used to be that New York comedy clubs were hazy with tobacco smoke, but not anymore, so from where Jackie stood onstage it was easy to read the expression on the face of the man trying to bore holes in Mitzi Lewis with his eyes.

Mitzi was a looker who attracted lots of the wrong kind of attention, with her spiky white blond hair, childlike features, and compact, curvaceous body. She was used to the attention, and her fellow comic Jackie was used to seeing it, but this guy seemed different. Much more intense. Like he wanted to have her right now with his Coke and fries.

Mitzi was scheduled to do the set after Jackie, so she was standing just offstage waiting to be introduced, visible only to a small part of the audience seated off to the side. The guy with the laser eyes and his tongue hanging out was alone at his table and had a perfect view.

Jackie took him in again with a sidelong glance while laying the groundwork for his final joke, the one about the man who thought he was a violin. The man at the table was handsome in a dark, predatory way, about average height and build, but there was something about him that suggested great physical strength. Though he wasn’t the only guy in the club wearing a dark blue suit and white shirt with a tie, he was the only one who looked like he’d just stepped off the cover of GQ. And the only one who for some reason looked flat-ass rich. He had the high cheekbones, well-defined features, and thick black hair of a male model.

If I looked like that, Jackie thought, I wouldn’t be funny.

But Jackie was funny, and headed for his own Comedy Channel special.

He continued his routine onstage without seeming to pay any attention to the man staring at Mitzi. But Jackie was still watching the guy. He was seated at one of the tiny tables that had been jammed in at the edges to accommodate maximum audiences. There was barely room on the thing for his elbows. The glass before him was empty. When a waiter approached and tried to push another drink on him, he made a flicking motion with his hand that somehow was a threat. The waiter retreated.

The longer Jackie watched the guy, the more he figured the handsome gawker was trouble and might want to do more than just look at Mitzi. Considering what was happening around town, with those women getting their throats sliced and their guts cut out, Jackie thought it might be wise to warn Mitzi about the guy.

Not that Jackie, who had his own plans for Mitzi, was the jealous type, but he did know that next to the dude in the blue business suit he looked like a troll. And a dumb one at that. Something else about the guy was that he looked intelligent even when sex starved which was when Jackie looked his dumbest.

“I thought you meant sex and violins!” Jackie heard himself say.

He got his expected big laugh, told the audience they’d been great and that he loved them, and then strode off stage. Ted Tack, who owned and managed Say What?, passed him going the other way and gave him a big grin and a mock salute. The mood was on.

“Don’t be obvious about it,” Jackie said to Mitzi, “but check out the guy in the blue suit, sitting alone right of stage and eating you up with his eyes.”

Mitzi leaned forward to peek as she was being introduced. “Yummy.”

“If you like raw sewage.”

“That’s harsh,” Mitizi said. “When I go on I’m gonna blow him a kiss.”

“Don’t be craz—”

But her intro was finished and she was gone, prancing toward the microphone and waving her arms.

Jackie wasn’t surprised when she didn’t blow the creep a kiss. She was too much of a pro for that, already into the moment, where the laughs were to be found.

“You guys are great! Anybody out there got a crazy uncle?”

Mitzi avoided looking at the man as she worked her way through her set. The folks out there grinning at her, already softened up by alcohol and Jackie Jameson, soon warmed to her. Then they were with her; then she was with them. Then she had them. God, what a great feeling! She deliberately avoided looking at Mr. Handsome in the blue suit, not letting anything get in the way of her timing and delivery.

But a part of her mind did wonder what Jackie was all worked up about. She didn’t see anything wrong with the guy, and he sure wasn’t the first to look at her with a hungry expression. She could recall catching Jackie himself staring at her in that cat-and-canary way, so what was the big deal?

She was halfway through her Seinfeld imitation, enjoying a big laugh, when she looked directly at Mr. Handsome.

Mistake.

Their eyes met, and she felt as if she’d been Tasered. Whoa! His hooded dark gaze took her breath away and made her legs rubbery. When she inhaled, her hot breath seemed to go straight to her stomach, making her weak.

Definitely something there.

She understood now what Jackie meant. There wasn’t the slightest doubt in her mind what this man was thinking, what he was doing with her in his mind. And they both knew she was a willing participant.

Best of all, everything about him suggested he was thinking exclusively of her. Intensely.

Mitizi liked intensity. There was too little of it around these days.

Jackie was right: this man held a power over her that she could no more deny than understand. What passed between them was a dark promise of unexplored pains and pleasures. Creepy? Sure. Mitzi could see how Jackie would read it that way. And maybe he was right. Most definitely he was right. Here was the danger of deep water.

What Jackie didn’t know—and what Mitzi was now discovering—was that she liked it.

God help me. I like it!

Doubt immediately began to creep in.

Is it only me? All in my mind? Is the guy simply stoned and only thinking about his wife and kids? Do I remind him of his sister?

She loused up the joke about the amorous mouse and the hot dog, but the audience was kind to her. They were still on her side and gave her a big hand, even a halfway standing O, as she left the stage.

She glanced back at Mr. Handsome, and he smiled and raised his empty glass in a silent toast. It was a smile and gesture that suggested they would meet again.

And they would.