Chapter 1

Jesus rides beside me
Never buys any smokes
Hurry up, hurry up
I’ve got enough of this stuff
Ashtray floor, dirty clothes, filthy jokes

“Yes,” she said, “but this one’s my favorite.”

How young are you?
How old am I?
Let’s count the rings around my eye

“What about,” he offered.

If being alone’s a crime I’m serving forever
Being strong’s your kind
Then I need help here with this feather
If being afraid is a crime
We hang side by side

“Okay, what about...”

Well, I broke the seal on my door
And I poured myself to bed
The whirlpool spinning around in my head
There was liquor on my breath
And you were on my mind

“You know that one?” he chuckled.

“I told you I was a fan,” she responded.

“But I get it fairly,” he shook his head. “I’m from Minneapolis, and you grew up in...”

“Does everyone here know the Replacements?” she interrupted.

“Hardly, unfortunately, and I actually first heard about them when I was in Hawaii.”

“You’re here in this cold place when you were in Hawaii?” she asked.

“Long story,” he responded.

“The CC Club,” she murmured, glancing around the dive bar. “What did Paul write about it?”

“Here comes a regular,” he told her.

She quoted:

Kneeling alongside old Sad Eyes
He says opportunity knocks once then the door slams shut
All I know is I’m sick of everything that my money can buy
A fool who wastes his life, God rest his guts

“That’s the one,” he smiled.

“So you’ve been here before?”

“A bunch of times when I lived a few blocks away.”

“And you saw them here?”

“Maybe Bob Stinson when he was blotto and crazy.”

“Blotto?”

“Wasted drunk. I only ever hung out with Paul when he was working with a friend’s band and that was at the Uptown. You know the Stinsons’ mom actually bartends there.”

“I heard.”

“It might have been earlier when he hung out here, back when Peter Jesperson still worked at the record store across the street and supposedly had an apartment above the store.”

“The Replacements’ manager.”

“Yeah. He actually managed my friend’s band for all the good it did them. At least they got an album on his label.”

“That’s something.”

“Yeah. They even got a pretty good write-up in the Trouser Press guide.”

“What’s that?”

“A pretty cool guide to basically alternative rock. I still got mine, but it’s pretty broken up.”

“Maybe you could show it to me,” she smirked coquettishly.

“Now?”

“You’re right. We should eat something. I’m starved.”

“Here? Bar food isn’t the best.”

“You’ve eaten here?”

“The fries aren’t too bad actually.”

“Okay.”

He waved the waitress over, a thickset, pretty blonde. They decided on a basket of fries, a cheeseburger and some fried chicken with a side of coleslaw, and they ended up sharing everything.

“Not as bad as I remember,” he decided.

“Not too healthy either,” she chuckled after wiping the grease from her lovely fullish lips on her even lovelier naturally deep tanned face. She drank down the last of the Leinies in her glass mug, finishing up.

Throughout the meal, they seemed to focus on him, which sort of made sense. Her life had been hard. She’d just escaped her probable assassination from a Central American country whose Communist takeover a couple years before, one which she’d actually assisted, had a leader who’d taken himself way too seriously, who’d become paranoid and distrustful of those closest to him. And, per usual, it was the intellectuals who were the first to enter his crosshairs. And Estella was definitely intellectual.

Not the first choice for extraction, whether it be CIA or some special op soldiers, America being its usual Anti-communist self as well as having capitalist self-interest, neither one would have caused interest in saving Estella’s hide.

But Joe associated with a completely different sort of group, unaffiliated with any government. Joe and his crew were essentially mercenaries, mostly in the sense of their independence rather than seeking top dollar for their services. The work though necessitated sponsorship, quite a lot of money for equipment and transportation and greasing hands, not to mention getting paid well, and a small, secretive cabal of wealthy businessmen, corporate owners, stock traders, even oligarchs and a royal, provided them their funds. Whatever self-interest these extremely wealthy people had had more to do with feeling better about themselves, feeling like they were doing good, sort of like their charity endowments but on steroids. When things get fucked, when good people become threatened because of the fucked up government they happen to be stuck in and no one seems to give a shit or are afraid to, Joe’s group gets sent.

Joe drove Estella to his condo overlooking Loring Park, a very nice ninth floor view, with the Walker Art Center and the Guthrie Theater complex in the background.

“Decaf?” he asked behind her as she gazed out, Joe admiring the curves under her red tank top and her strong, shapely ass in jeans, which while the pants weren’t all that tight, still managed to reveal the shape.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like a shower and then sleep,” she said, still gazing.

“Of course. Mi casa es su casa.”

She turned to him and smiled. “Could I borrow one of your t-shirts to sleep in?”

“Just a sec.”

He went into his bedroom and retrieved a shirt advertising the Suburbs.

“Another local band,” he explained.

“Thanks,” she grinned, grabbing the shirt and headed to the bathroom.

“You sure I can’t get you a brandy to help you sleep?” he asked through the door.

“That won’t be a problem,” she chuckled.

He decided to make himself a decaf, grinding the beans while she turned on the shower, and poured himself some cognac in a snifter, sipping while he waited for the coffee to brew.

Once the coffee finished, he stirred in milk and sugar and brought them out to the sofa that faced the open window. Atop the coffee table sat a word processor where he typed out a record of the mission.

It ended up easier than most, in fact easier than any he could remember. The hardest part hadn’t been Estella’s extraction, but making sure the Padre, the one who had made contact with Joe’s group, would remain unknown as a source. A hugely popular figure in the country made him theoretically untouchable, but a more and more lunatic ruler probably would find no real constraints about offing even such a person.

The Padre heard the confession from someone who knew the plot against Estella, her regular visits with him, same day and time, same exit in which she’d be shot, and had her leave earlier, making an excuse. The assassinator, though in position, was unprepared enough to be confused when Joe swept her away. The man still drew, ready to fire and so had to be killed by Joe’s compadre riding shotgun, appropriately, while Joe pulled Estella into the back seat of the sedan, purposely old and dusty, and the driver spun off, making disappearance by blending into traffic, eventually driving out of the more urban roads, out to the jungle and off road to a clearing where the car was abandoned and the helicopter awaited.

One of Joe’s skills was calming things down, actually a well-studied skill, and Estella, suddenly kidnapped, became quieted remarkably quickly, Joe, a polyglot, speaking in Spanish, letting her know she wasn’t in danger. It helped that the person riding shotgun was a woman, most likely, less macho what with the swarthy driver and Joe himself a large man, not that she could ever be described as petite.

Lili (shortened from Liliuokalani) Bishop, known mostly as Queenie, had, as might be suggested, old rich Hawaiian lineage, Bishop being a name going back generations in the Islands, and with her tall thick build, at least a quarter of her blood was original to the island, the rest suggestive of Asian, African and European. Though none of her could be traced back to the mythic Amazons, she could very well have been born of them. Even with her snarky smirk and her suggestive, “You should at least give me a crack at her,” Estella seemed more at ease with her there, perhaps because of the humor, however lascivious.

What surprised Joe most about meeting Estella was her own suggestive teasing. The situation, Estella meeting regularly with the Padre, made Joe figure her to be a nun, or at the very least religiously suppressed, but got none of that feeling once she relaxed. Instead it had been a long conversation between the two, Estella mostly picking Joe’s brain about the United States, eventually zeroing in on Minneapolis and its musical heritage, Prince and the Replacements, thus them driving to the infamous CC Club before settling at Joe’s apartment.

The teasing and interest she showed him made him hopeful things might just get physical. She was a lovely woman with a slender body with a bit of extra flesh in interesting places making her all the sexier. Though almost a foot and a half shorter than him, truth be told, he tended to prefer cute petite women for some reason. But any teasing had been without direct touching, though he could read gestures in her that suggested such interests such as touches of her hair and other places and the general openness of her posture. There had been glances too, specifically downward ones picking up the tumescence that rarely went away in her presence. Though not full on hardness, nether was he fully soft.

With a sigh, he finished the report, his drinks, and put things away. He entered the bathroom still with a hint of her presence there where he showered, masturbating to completion, before brushing his teeth and, covering his lower body with the towel, headed to the main bedroom of the apartment where he put on his usual t-shirt and boxers, his sleepwear and fell asleep immediately.

“Ssh,” he heard when startled awake, his long history of sleeping in dangerous places making so any disturbance nearby awoke him. “It’s just me.”

A glance at the window showed night remained, and at his alarm clock that dawn would be approaching soon. Without permission, Estella slipped into his bed beneath the quilt and top sheet. He shifted to his side to face her. His eyes, already used to the darkness, could make out that lovely face before they shut when she moved her lips to his. Two sets of arms crossed with hands moving to caress faces, Joe’s fingers slipping through dark tresses. When his tongue tapped at her teeth, slightly open, she soon greeted it with hers, and that intensified everything.

Moments after, she urged him onto his back and straddled his waist. He could feel a wetness pressing against his abdomen. Her (or his) t-shirt remained atop her, but she wore nothing beneath it. That wetness moved up and down against him, and he shifted things, lifting his torso, until he created a lap for her to press into and gave her his cock to press against, already fully engorged, though kept from direct contact by thin cotton.

Breaking the kiss, he took hold of the hem of her shirt. “May I?” he asked.

“Please,” she murmured.

Once he removed it, revealing b-cup perfection, she removed his and they returned to the intense kiss and the fuck like rubbing, his hands grabbing hold of her firm ass cheeks, each a little more than a hand hold for his big hands, and accentuated the pressure of their genitals rubbing together. Finally, ending the kiss, his mouth lowered to envelope each breast, letting the flesh slip out until just the nipples remained to suck and gently nibble.

“Please,” she growled, her hands shifting down to tug at his boxers.

“Not yet,” he chuckled, itself almost a growl, and with a suddenness and strength which thrilled her, he turned her over. After briefly reestablishing the French kiss, his mouth moved to her breasts again, his fingers already there gently tugging at her turgid nipples. One hand of his remained while the other journeyed lower, to her wet, hot center, to explore and to rub.

By the time his mouth followed the exploratory hand to its destination, one suck of her taut clit and one quick lap across it and another suck sent her over intensely. She shook with the pleasure, and he lapped up the increased juices her orgasm created. Reaching over to his bedside table, opening the drawer, he grabbed a rubber packet, freed the rubber, lowered his boxers to free his cock, inches longer than normal with a general matching thickness, and rolled it on. Once done, he finally managed to strip off his boxers that had lingered on his thighs.

“Put it where you want it,” he demanded, taking her hand and placing it on his cock.

She pulled the two pillows behind her head to watch, even in the darkness, before taking the cock offered. “So big,” she murmured.

“I’ll be careful,” he promised.

At first, almost teasingly, she used it like a huge finger, rubbing it between her labia and across her clit before finally setting it at the center, her hands moving to his ass, and pulling him in.

“Motherfuck!” she growled, making him suppress a chuckle, but not the moan. Estella had a tight pussy.

Both watched the slow entrance, helped by the emerging light of dawn coming through the window, inching ever deeper before inching back. Thankfully, and not all that surprisingly, her cunt gave way to its intruder, the making of space intense for both parties, and always in a good way. Even more thankfully, when that column of hard, sensitive flesh fully entered that damp lively burrow, only then did it tap at the end of its space. And that tapping only enhanced Estella’s pleasure.

“Fuck me!” she demanded.

His hands grabbed her ass, lifting it as he withdrew and plunged all the way back in, repeating and gradually speeding up.

“Rub yourself,” he growled. “I don’t know how long I can last!”

Her fingers moved to her clit, and when her other hand pulled aggressively on her nipple, he decided to help there, nibbling at the other nipple.

“Harder Motherfucker!” she yelled. “Faster!”

He did both, despite being antithetical to him holding back from cumming.

And he did cum, keeping it to himself, continuing to fuck her for as long as he could.

And then he realized he was still hard! Something that had happened to him once when he was much younger. Tight snatch, he figured, thanking the gods for it, for the intense pleasure of it and its ability to keep him hard and her pleasured.

Maybe a couple minutes later, she finally came, again with intensity, and wetly, the sound of him continuing to fuck her through it sounding like churning butter.

Her next orgasm arrived much quicker, and she stopped him and pulled back. “You’re still hard?”

“Hard again actually,” he admitted.

“Wow. Okay.”

She moved onto her stomach, pushing away the pillows that had propped her head. He moved behind her, enjoying the view of her firm ass, a bit thicker like her breasts than expected, and the curving to her waist and the smooth dark bronze skin of her back, and guided himself back in. This time he just went with it, holding her hips and just fucking her. She didn’t seem to mind, pulling on her hanging nipples and reaching back to rub herself along with his passing shaft, and he could hear the sound of her breath expressing the build up to yet another orgasm and held back as much as he could.

“Fuck!” she growled.

Only then did he press deep and undulate, letting the ejaculate join the earlier stuff, hoping for room in the condom.

Pulling out carefully, he saw that it had held. “Be right back,” he told her, leaving her not just to get rid of the overused condom, but to piss. Rather urgently, truth be told.

When he returned, she had put the t-shirt back on and was balling her eyes out. He decided to also put his sleeping clothes back on again before comforting her in an embrace, her lying along his right side as he lay on his back.

“Why did you rescue me?” she sniffled.

“Honestly, I don’t know,” he admitted. “The Padre thought you needed rescuing, so we rescued you.”

“Did he ... pay for it?”

“Doubtful. Let’s just say my group has generous patrons and leave it at that.”

She quieted, but he continued to feel her tears dampen his chest.

“This wasn’t my first rodeo,” she finally said. “I’m an organizer, born to be one. My mother managed to get me out of my birth country before the democratically elected socialist president and much of those who followed him, and, you know, democratic so the majority actually voted him in, were either killed, the president actually beat them to it by killing himself, or disappeared. You know, same thing. My mother was one of them. One of the disappeared.

“I was raised by a sympathetic family, some sort of distant cousins, in a neighboring country. Carefully sympathetic because of the change in politics could be like a change in weather, another force blowing in, right wing then left wing and so forth. I guess I wasn’t so careful, though I did manage to keep my head down just enough to only be jailed a couple times. Of course I always made use of those chances too,” she chuckled, “Encouraging fellow captors and taunting our jailers.

“I went to University, learned politics and history, sociology and psychology.”

“And the Replacements,” Joe added.

“Them too,” she chuckled. “Could we hear them?”

“Which one?”

“I’ve always been partial to the last.”

“Me too.”

Joe got up and put on the Replacements last cassette and returned to his place and she returned to hers.

“Psychology?” he finally asked.

“I thought it might be useful to understand how the mind works, why people do what they do, what compels them, you know?”

“I do,” he told her. “I have a masters in it.”

“Really? A bit of psychology calming me down.”