Chapter 4

HollywoodGold: I don’t know why Connie Carlyle isn’t up for every MILF role in Hollywood. She would have made an awesome Schiffler’s Mom.

The roof of the building at 341 Lafayette Street had been stripped of any features Connie would have recognized from the last time she was here. Only a small bit of slate flooring remained where the bar had once stood. In place of the dance floor, blue waterproof tarps covered the blocky shapes of construction materials. Most significantly, the space where the hot tub enclosure had been was bare and the hole where the tub had been was capped.

As Connie made her way towards that corner of the roof, weaving between pallets of lumber and less recognizable materials, she realized that a shape she’d thought was a construction shed was actually half the privacy shell that had once enclosed the hot tub, turned on its side. The two walls now made a peak against the noon-time sky. Connie made a slow circuit around it until she came to the open side that had once been the bottom of the shell. Sunlight filtered in, showing the exposed sockets where the lights had once been. The shell had been built to keep Colin’s neighbors in taller buildings from looking down and seeing what went on in the hot tub, but many nights, it had also served to shrink the world down to those who were inside as Colin held court.

Whatever it had been, it was just building waste now - only of possible interest to the two dozen or so people who’d been part of Colin Grayson-Stone’s inner circle like Connie herself. Still, as Connie leaned in for one last look, she thought she could still pick up a faint scent of chlorine and pot smoke.

“Connie. Stay. Join us.”

Connie wasn’t looking for Colin and Lauren when she opened the door of the privacy shell. She was looking for her date and Kate Moss, who someone downstairs claimed to have seen him with “up on the roof.”

She wasn’t even sure why she was bothering to look. She’d come here with some Wall Street guy who thought cocaine made him interesting and who’d been surprised when Connie turned down “a toot.” When he suggested coming here, she’d been about to claim an early call the next morning and go back to her apartment. But, she’d been to the Loft a couple of times with Colin’s friends who had an open invitation to drop by and loved the crowd she’d met there. If Wall Street Guy had such an invitation, it made him far more interesting than cocaine ever could.

Still, it didn’t make him interesting enough to go looking for him when he ditched or was ditched by her within ten minutes of arriving. She instead wound up dancing with a shirtless Senegalese man who spoke no more than twelve words of English. He didn’t ask her name or flirt with her. He might have been gay. Or, he might have just been happy to have somewhere to dance where people wouldn’t be afraid that getting a little bit of sweat on them from someone fresh off the boat from Africa might give them AIDS.

She danced and she drank and she flirted. A lot of the girls here were models Connie had worked with and she recognized some of the men from the fashion business as well. She recognized other people as well - local politicians and someone she was pretty sure was on the New York Yankees. But, there was a polite, entirely fictitious anonymity in the Loft. If people didn’t introduce themselves to you, it was considered the height of bad manners not to pretend you didn’t know who they were.

Some time shortly after midnight, a friend of a colleague mentioned that she thought she’d seen Connie’s date hanging out with Kate Moss on the roof. Connie didn’t want her date back. Although she’d never met Kate Moss and wouldn’t for another ten years, she wished Kate the best of luck with him. But, in her current state of inebriation, it seemed very important that she not appear to be the sort of girl who let her date run off with another model without consequences.

And so she’d come up to the roof where a light drizzle was limiting the crowd to a few determined drinkers hanging around the bar. No date. No Kate. She wasn’t sure why she thought they might be in the hot tub, but the lights were on and she could hear the soft voices of a man and a woman speaking in low tones.

What she found when she opened the door was Colin and Lauren, naked and kissing. At nineteen, Connie had been modeling for almost five years and thought herself rather worldly, but it didn’t stop her from letting out a surprised sound that might have been “eep” and stammering an apology when they looked up at her.

Then Lauren reached out a hand, said her name, and asked her to stay.

Under other circumstances, Connie might have backed out of the shelter and closed the door. But, she’d been looking for a standing invite of her own to the Loft since the first time she visited. Besides being one of the best continuous parties in New York at the time, the guest list was frequently a “who’s who” of fashion and entertainment. It was such a perfect storm of fun and career opportunity, she’d been ready to fight Kate Moss for a chance to latch onto an otherwise uninteresting broker who was allowed in the front door.

She’d spoken with Colin and Lauren twice now. Colin was handsome, charming, and well connected. He’d asked about her career and had follow-up questions that required a working knowledge of the people involved. He’d even told her about a designer he “thought she would be perfect for” and, when she said the magic words “Colin thought I’d be right for your line,” she’d seen the effect it had.

And Lauren was beautiful - a fair-skinned redhead who’d done some very selective TV and modeling. The first time Connie had been here, someone downstairs had said that Lauren “made a full-time career out of being Colin’s part-time girlfriend.”

Connie wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. She suspected the implication was that Colin or Lauren or both of them slept around and that the speaker had been encouraging Connie to approach Colin if she was interested in him. But, there was something witchy and otherworldly about Lauren that scared Connie a little.

Still, it was Lauren who’d invited her to stay. Colin watched Connie consider her next move, but didn’t say anything.

Connie closed the door, resisting the cliche of pointing out that she had no swimsuit with her. Neither Colin nor Lauren had a stitch on. When Connie let her little, black dress fall to the floor and slipped off the thong she’d been wearing underneath, she was just as naked.

She stood, watching the two of them until Lauren gestured her forward. Connie lowered herself into the pool, which came up above her waist, and waded towards the two of them.

When she was halfway across, Lauren swam forward, meeting her, drawing her in, and kissing her deeply. As she did, she drew Connie forward and turning her until she had her back pressed against Colin’s chest. When Lauren went in for a second kiss, Connie made a small sound of protest and reached out, not sure if she was trying to stop what came next or draw it in faster. She ended up stroking Lauren’s hair.

“You like me. Don’t you, Connie?” Lauren was so close, their lips almost brushed against each other.

“I don’t ... know what to do with you,” Connie admitted. “I’ve never...”

Lauren kissed her more gently this time. “Just do what feels good. If I don’t like it, I’ll tell you. If I do like it, I’ll tell you even louder.”

Connie’s objections, never a particularly hearty breed to begin with, died unspoken when Colin cupped her breasts, kneading them gently and Lauren kissed her again, each time with more passion. Whatever she’d walked into between Colin and Lauren, she was soon swept up in it. She’d acted more on a general desire for Colin than a clear impression of what she expected to happen once she climbed into that hot tub, but she found herself the center of attention once she arrived.

She wound up on her back on the wide, wooden bench that surrounded the pool, legs parted, Lauren’s tongue and fingers moving inside of her, spreading a tight coil of warmth through her whole body. Later, she found herself riding Colin, her own hands and mouth exploring Lauren. Later still, she was in bed downstairs with both of them, Colin on top of her, her nails raking down his shoulders. She could never remember that night in more than a series of intense, disconnected images, but that night was the first of many she would share with Lauren and Colin, together or singly.

“Miss Carlyle?”

Connie gave an undignified, little shriek, spun around, and clutched her chest. She’d been so lost in her memories, she hadn’t noticed she was no longer alone on the roof. Already startled, it took her a moment to register that the young man who’d approached her was not, in fact, her lover Colin come back to life, as young and vibrant as he’d been the day she first met him. It could only be one person.

“Nick Coyle?” she asked, leaning against the broken structure she’d been examining.

“Yes.” Nick offered her a strong, steadying hand. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Connie accepted the hand and, for a moment, even allowed herself to lean against this familiar, young stranger before righting herself. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be up here. I’m trespassing. Aren’t I?”

Nick gave her a smirk that was pure Colin and sent a shiver up her spine. “I won’t tell the owner if you don’t.” His smile changed and became more deferential. “I actually came up here to ask you a favor. My father is a big fan of yours.”

“Your ... father?” Connie frowned, then made sense of the statement. “Oh. You must mean your stepfather.”

“The only father I ever knew,” Nick said, but he nodded and smiled at the same time. In that smile, she saw Anna, Nick’s mother. Connie only knew Anna for a few weeks, but it had been an intense, tumultuous time both immediately before and immediately after Colin’s death and she’d stayed in Connie’s guest room most of that time. The memories were still vivid.

Nick looked at the broken privacy shell Connie had been examining, then back at her. “I guess you knew him ... my biological father?”

“I did. I was modeling in New York when he was ... here. Pretty much every model who worked in the city in those years came by here at least once.”

“He lived here?” Nick asked.

“You didn’t know?” Connie pointed out the capstone. “I came up to see if his hot tub was still here. But, it’s gone, I guess.”

Nick nodded. “The ... something was cracked. It would have cost more to repair than replace. I didn’t realize Colin lived here, but that makes sense. All I knew was that I owned the building and it wasn’t occupied. Apparently, they were going to lease it to a bank, but the deal fell through.”

Connie looked up at Nick, his familiar features in an unfamiliar configuration. “Did you say your father was a big fan of mine?”

“Huge. He tries to make me watch Starfall with him at least once a year.” Nick winced at his own words. “It’s a good movie.”

Connie laughed. “Even I’ve only seen Starfall all the way through once. Are you sure he’s not just a big Jack Decker fan?”

Nick shook his head. “Definitely not. He also watches NYPD Police Blotter on Netflix and swears you have an uncredited role as one of the jurors on an episode of Law and Order he saw once while flipping through the channels. And he says things like, ‘Hollywood doesn’t make actresses like Connie Carlyle anymore.’”

He said the last phrase in a different voice, making Connie laugh again. “And has he seen your impression of him saying that?”

“He might have ... once or twice.” Nick blushed. “I, uh, didn’t make the association between the Carlyle group and Connie Carlyle until one of the models mentioned your first name. My dad’s head might explode if he knew you were here on set. But, if I just text him and tell him, he’ll probably think I’m joking. I was hoping I could get a selfie of the two of us together to send him.”

Connie touched her hair and felt where the wind up here had blown it out of place. “Would it be all right if I went downstairs and freshened up a bit first? I’d really like to look my best for a big fan. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a big fan before.”

Nick offered her a hand, which she took as they stepped around a large toolbox. “I’m sure that’s not true. Starfall is a really good movie.”

Connie considered the question seriously as the reached the rooftop access door. She’d been a good enough actress and modeled professionally for over ten years, but she didn’t think she’d ever heard anyone describe themself as a “big Connie Carlyle fan” and mean it. Nick Coyle’s dad might be the only one.

PaladinOfSole: Sixteen minutes forty-nine seconds in before the first die is cast. Too much setup, not enough D&D!

The druid Sylvana had been traveling upriver for a week, searching out the source of the toxic magic that had made her friends in the southern jungles sick before she found the town of Adrian’s Crossing. While traveling, she’d come to a caravanserai and met up with a small party of adventurers at who had been hired to investigate the disappearance of an entire village of fur trappers in the north. Suspecting that they might both be looking for the same thing, they joined forces.

Even before arriving in Adrian’s crossing, Sylvana had been noticing disruptions to the natural patterns of local wildlife. Deer and rabbits had all but vanished in the area and there had been more carrion birds everywhere. With more experience, she would have been able to query the animals she could find and make sense of what they knew, but for now, their thoughts were too alien.

This was the first human settlement they’d found along the river and it was very quiet. The town was big enough to have a single, long dock reaching out into the river for ships to berth, but not a town wall. The first buildings they passed were empty, locked with no lights burning inside. Eventually, they reached a stable and could hear horses inside, but no one approached when they called out.

It wasn’t until they were nearly in the town square that they found a building with lights burning. From across the square, they spotted a two-story building with all its windows lit up.

“We still haven’t seen any people?” Corva the rogue asked.

Hall held up a twenty-sided die. “Everyone grab a die with this shape, roll it and read me the number that comes up on top.”

Sylvana, Corva, and Kiki the Wizard spoke single-digit numbers. Adora, the cleric, said “ninety-one.”

Corva shook her head. “That’s sixteen. You’re looking at it upside down.”

Hall answered, “Adora, you saw a few shapes that must have been people, but they kept to the shadows and they kept their distance. You couldn’t make out any details.”

“Is there any way I can sneak into the inn?” Corva considered the building, but in addition to being well lit, the doors and windows were wide open on both floors. She might have been able to climb up to the second story and sneak in a window, but if anyone was watching, they wouldn’t be able to not see her.