Episode 5

Don still didn’t know what her name was—the hooker who slept in the front passenger seat on the drive home.

Often, while driving alone, Don reflected on the life of his ancient ancestor, Giacomo Casanova. Most of his life, the Venetian had been on the move from one place to another—usually on the run from trouble, only to end up in another mess. For instance, Giacomo’s torrid affair with an innocent-looking courtesan of sixteen, called Marianne de Charpillon. On their first meeting, she flirtatiously promised to make him suffer for loving her, and she kept her word. For years, she teased, tormented and exploited Casanova for everything she could squeeze out of him.

Knowing all about Casanova’s life, it was safe to say that, even though Giacomo had seduced more than 200 women, at times, he was sinned against rather than sinning. It didn’t help that he also thought that women were equal to men.

With trouble as his constant companion, Giacomo died a lonely man in 1798 at the age of seventy-three.

Don wondered if this black beauty he’d inherited would be his Marianne. He glanced at her. Her head lolled to one side and leaned against the passenger door window. Her mouth hung open—not very sexy—and her breath gave off a nauseating sour stench.

When the car’s tires started rolling over acorns and the engine worked harder to power up Don’s steep, hillside driveway, her eyes opened and she sat up.

California oaks standing guard on both sides of the narrow driveway made it feel like they were driving to the hotel in Hitchcock’s Psycho. But behind the oak trees were only avocado trees.

Once in the garage, Don helped the hooker out of his maître d’ car, a fire-engine-red, 1968 Ford Mustang Shelby GT 500.

Next to the Mustang sat a restored, 1945, four-wheel drive military Jeep with a canvas top and open sides. In the far stall was the banged-up, rusty, 1980 Dodge van Don drove to his day job as an English teacher in a public high school.

Working two jobs was how he held his demons at arm’s length, and it also helped him stay out of a Giacomo Casanova-style mess with women.

With that thought, he wondered why he had played the knight in shining armor to this hooker. Sometimes, he didn’t trust his own motives.

With a hand on her elbow, he led her into the house through the connecting door. The hands on the kitchen clock said 3:45. He moved her through the kitchen and across the great room with its wall of glass and ocean view.

The house sat on top of a hill. Access to the driveway was through an automated gate at the end of a winding road lined with costly homes. The concrete drive led to the back of the house and the garage.

“How does a guy with a job like yours live in a place like this?” she asked.

“This way,” he said, ignoring the question and taking her hand to pull her away from the view and into a hall to one of the bedrooms that had been used by his grandmother’s servants—one on the other side of the house from his bedroom. He wanted this temptation as far from his bed as possible.

Her room was a suite with a bathroom and a separate den, which had its own wall of glass facing the urban night lights and dark ocean. He pulled back the bedspread and helped her undress, only to discover that she wore no bra or panties. Her bikini-worthy body sucked the air out of his lungs, and it was all he could do to not eat her alive with his eyes. His hands twitched with the desire to touch and explore.

He was relieved when she slipped between the sheets and he pulled the blanket up under her chin, but it was too late. His pecker had given him away. He pointed to the bathroom and told her where she could find towels. Before he left, he closed the blinds and plunged the bedroom into total darkness.

In the kitchen, he washed his shaking hands and stared out the window at the view before filling a glass with distilled water from a water cooler next to the double-door Sub-Zero refrigerator.

On the way to his room, he stopped in the laundry, stripped and added their clothes to the dirty laundry.

Once the washing machine was busy, he went straight to the shower in his room at the end of the hall, where he turned the water to steaming hot. After he soaped up under the stream, he turned off the hot and gasped as the frigid water rinsed away the foaming suds. He seldom took artic showers, but he had to do something about the images of the hooker’s body that flooded his mind with lust. If he were to join her in bed, he knew she would let him take her any way he wanted.

Out of the shower, dry and shivering, he slipped into his bed. It took a moment before the warmth returned. The last time he glanced at the clock, it was five in the morning.