The Cozy Rooms
Brian’s Apartment
“He’s gone!” Ariel cried, rousing Brian from a blissful slumber.
Before his housemate’s interruption, Brian dreamed that he was the judge, jury and prize for a collection of bright-eyed twinks and seasoned MILFs competing for his affection on a nonspecific tropical island.
He opened his eyes to find a haggard, panicked Ariel in a mis-buttoned red union suit, with a bleary Tyler standing behind him.
“Jesus,” Brian muttered. “Whosit’s gone?”
“Gage. My son.”
“Damn. You didn’t even have him a day.”
“I tucked him into bed in my Costume Archive ‘cause Apartment One’s a shithole. Then I wake up and he’s gone!”
“Then he’s dead fo sho,” Brian intoned gravely. “And FYI, you need to relax your worry lines or they’ll stick like that. Especially the 11’s.”
“The what?”
“The lines between your eyebrows. Yours are more like 1,111’s.”
Ariel touched the offending area. “They are? Go to hell. I’m being serious, Brian.”
“Maybe he went to do something crazy, like breakfast.”
Ariel massaged the skin between his brows. “My intuition never lies. It’s pinging off the hook that something’s wrong.”
“Maybe he’s like, sightseeing in the Quarter,” Tyler suggested.
“This early?” Ariel countered.
“It’s 1:15.”
“In the afternoon?”
“Yeah.”
“I rest my case,” Ariel brought his face close to the mirror on Brian’s headboard. “Is it possible to just get, like, a touch of Botox, or do you have to go all the way? There must be a happy in-between.”
The building shook as the front door slammed downstairs.
“He’s back!” Tyler beamed.
“That could be my mother,” Ariel growled, loping towards the door. “Thanks a lot for gifting her one of my apartments, by the way.”
“She said you offered her a place.”
“Anything that comes out of Betty’s mouth, beyond drool and vomit, is a lie.”
Leaning over the balcony outside Brian’s apartment, Ariel scanned the courtyard below as Gage stepped out from the foyer, breathing hard in a mesh tank top and tiny blue satin 70’s shorts.
“Where the hell have you been?” Ariel demanded.
Gage grinned. “I went for a run.”
“Dressed like that?”
“Like a mantrap,” Tyler added helpfully.
“I found these in your Costume Pile,” Gage explained.
“Costume Archive.”
“Hope it’s okay.”
Brian stepped out to join them. “See? I told you he was okey-dokey.” He squinted pensively at the heavens. “What was it you said about your intuition? It ‘never lies’ or something?”
“He went jogging.”
“What’s your beef with jogging?”
“I haven’t run more than a hundred consecutive feet of my own volition since the Reagan administration. I only bother if I’m being chased. Who goes jogging?”
Gage giggled and leapt up the steps, three at a time, until he reached Ariel’s landing. When he was out of earshot, Brian whistled. “Kid’s a smokeshow in those slutty lil’ shorts.”
“Don’t.” Ariel fixed Brian with a Medusa-like gaze. “No. Nein. Nyet. 没有.”
“He’s of age.”
“Barely.”
“Is he into uncut guys?”
Ariel feigned a laugh, then pointed in Brian’s face. “Keep your foreskin sheathed around my progeny.” Ariel turned to Tyler. “You too.”
“I didn’t get one to start with.”
“Then your clitoral hood or whatever. Gage is a tabula rasa. He deserves a healthy introduction to sex like I never got. ‘As the twig is bent,’ you know.”
“My twig’ll bend him six ways from Sunday,” Brian leered. As Ariel lunged toward him, Brian turned tail into his apartment and slammed and locked the door.
Then the buzzer at the entry belched the announcement of a new arrival.
“Oh God, it’s Betty,” Ariel moaned, bracing himself to evict his mother.
“Naw, she can let herself in,” Tyler demurred. “She don’t need to ring.”
“Let herself in how?”
“I gave her a key.”
“You gave her a key?”
“Sorry,” Tyler apologized, following Ariel down the stairs. “I can ask her to give it back.”
“Trust me, she copied that key the minute the hardware stores opened.” Ariel peered through a peephole in the front door, and grimaced.
“Good morning, Valencia!” he sang a moment later on opening the door, his face reset in a welcoming smile. “Won’t you come in?”
#
When Medulla’s consigliere requested an impromptu private conference, Ariel led Valencia to a one-car garage off the foyer where their privacy was assured. He gestured toward a weather-beaten turquoise 1954 Chevy 3100 pickup that dominated the room.
“Lemme introduce you to the Green Hornet.” Ariel patted the pickup proudly. “Belonged to my gramma Magdalene. The Hornet got her outta more than a few scrapes back in the day.” He opened the passenger door for Valencia, then took a seat behind the steering wheel and slammed the door. “So what’s the word?”
“I’ve a few matters to discuss on Medulla’s behalf.”
“Shoot.”
“First: you got a new regular.”
“Gordon?” Ariel referred to his most recent client, a lonely burn survivor in the Bywater whose disabilities left Ariel unfazed. “I’m honored. I’m fixin’ to bolster his confidence and get him back on the dating horse.”
“He inquired as to whether you had a dungeon. Do you?”
Ariel paused. “Been thinking about converting the mop room for years,” he offered in a noncommittal manner. “But I don’t like traffic coming in and outta here.”
“Medulla suggests that you consider installing a fully-equipped dungeon on the premises.”
“By ‘suggesting that I consider’ does she mean ‘You will build a dungeon today?’”
“No,” Valencia smiled. “Two weeks is a reasonable deadline. She envisions a promising career for you as a Pro-Dom.”
“Always the Dominatrix, never the sub,” Ariel moaned. “Can you tell her I’ll think about it?”
“After we take a look at the big picture.”
“Oh dear.”
“1101 St. Monica Street is on the verge of foreclosure, no?”
Ariel sighed. “I gotta scrape up $12K by the end of the week. The other night Medulla said she might help me out. You were there.” Ariel paused, realizing that he was trapped. “Fine. I’ll get cracking on a dungeon. I reckon I got alla the accessories in boxes hereabouts. I just need a few tankards of flat black paint.”
“From today’s seed grows tomorrow’s harvest.”
“Oh trust, I know. Did I mention I got a son?”
Valencia continued. “Regarding the remainder due your mortgage lender, we understand that you recently imported no small amount of Ketamine from Nueva Leon. How much, to be precise?”
Ariel knew better than to lie. “Two liters.”
“And Esketamine was the brand?”
“Yep.”
“Esketamine evaporates to a gram per milliliter,” Valencia calculated, “which means you’re holding two thousand grams with a street value worth between 160 and two hundred thousand. Not bad for a base of $5K, give or take.”
“You know as well as me that scoring that shit takes hella more shoe leather than hitting ‘Buy Now’ on Amazon.”
“Be assured that Medulla appreciates your efforts. Before she commits to settling your affairs, she requests a liter of product delivered today. Undiluted. Unadulterated.”
“Hold it. The street value of a liter adds up to buckets more than the mortgage.”
“Do you foresee moving the requisite product before foreclosure?”
“No,” Ariel admitted. Though Ariel and Brian sent a coded text-blast to their buyers that the NOLA Ketamine Drought of 2023 was over, moving 120 grams in less than a week was impossible. “Look, this earns me favors beyond covering a few missed mortgage payments. I’m just saying.”
“We have no shortage of favors in mind where you’re concerned,” Valencia murmured cryptically, her left eye glinting in the light. “Stay on the Path where you’re guided. You have more friends than you know.”
Twenty minutes later, Valencia exited the Cozy Rooms with a glass Minute Maid bottle nestled in her purse containing Ketamine enough to incapacitate a zoo.
Gotcha Tchotchkes
814 Decatur Street
“Love your merchandise!” Ariel’s mother enthused to the bearded salesclerk at Gotcha Tchotchkes, a tourist magnet on Decatur Street. Her left hand held a hollowed-out beignet wrapped in napkins; her right hand paged uneasily through her phone’s recent notifications.
“8:19 AM: You’re now sharing your location on Barnacle!”
What in Sam Hill is ‘Barnacle’? Betty wondered. I was fast asleep at that ungodly hour. She considered texting Ariel for advice, but a reasonable fear of eviction cleansed the notion from her mind. The Cozy Rooms was her sole sanctuary from the Mexican cartel members who firebombed her cottage back in Boca Raton.
I best keep in the wings for now, Betty decided. Like a shadow. A whisper. He’ll get used to me around the Cozy Rooms before long. I’ll make myself indispensable.
She pocketed her phone and twirled a sunglasses rack with her free hand, eyes falling on a pair of mirrored tortoise-shell ‘Rai-Banz.’ She tried them on and found them flattering to her face shape, lending her a sophisticated, inscrutable air.
Betty glanced at the clerk reflected in the security mirror overhead; as he was preoccupied with something beneath the register, she stealthily folded the glasses and tucked them inside the hollowed-out beignet, wrapping it in napkins.
“Thanks for letting me look around!” Betty sang, bolting past the counter toward the door. “Sil-vous-plais!”
“Yo lady!” growled the clerk, stepping from behind the counter. “I saw you on the cam stealing shit.”
“Impossible!” Betty shoved the door open with an explosion of bells. “I didn’t even bring a purse! Where on earth would I hide a pair of sunglasses?” She hurried across Decatur Street toward Jackson Square, the clerk hot on her heels.
“Gimme my $9.99, you klepto bitch!”
As his hand clapped on her shoulder, Betty found herself wishing she’d packed a pair of simple mules in her emergency go-bag; her odds of escaping were hobbled by the one-inch heel.
“Hand over the fucking beignet!”
“All right, all right.” Betty crabbily surrendered the pastry. “Jeez. Don’t want no trouble. I’ll just walk.”
As Betty turned, a moving van screeched to a halt behind her. Two masked goons exploded from the side door, one wrapping her in a headlock and the other scooping her legs off of the ground.
With practiced efficiency they tossed Betty in the back of the van, where a third kidnapper forced a black mask over her head as she clawed at the air. The goons slammed the door from the inside as the van peeled down Decatur, rounding the corner as the clerk blinked in disbelief.
###
Thanks for reading!
Until next Monday,
☮️ & ❤️,
