Chapter 1

"'Welcome to my parlor' said the spider to the fly," a voice echoed as deep and mysterious as the dark alley from which it came.

"Hunh?" I responded. Having stumbled out of a nearby basement bar called the Speakeasy my mind could have been sharper. Not that it's all that sharp when sober. Not exactly dull either. After all I had graduated that spring, a BA in Theater with concentrations in Playwriting and Acting and with a 3.3 GPA. The University of Hawaii isn't the most rigorous learning institution, so achieving that didn't necessarily represent razor sharpness. But my play had been accepted to workshop at ACT out of several hundred choices.

Attending the workshop placed my inebriated stumbling in the beautiful albeit cold summer night streets of San Francisco.

My lonely inebriation had been caused by the workshop, specifically another young writer in the workshop. Her lovely face, a wide oval with soft pale skin and sturdy slightly upturned nose and intelligent hazel eyes and a cute gap between her teeth revealed whenever she smiled her utterly unique smile--her thick lips stretching thinner and her head slightly tilting in an adorable expression of curiosity--and the waves of dirty blonde hair reaching just beyond her wide strong shoulders framing that loveliness captivated me instantaneously at our first meeting. And the two weeks since, noticing more of her, including her firm full butt and its sexy movement and the often braless perfectly moderate sized breasts that held themselves proudly and the lengthy nipples revealed occasionally making two tiny tents on her tight tops or torso hugging velour dresses increased her capture of my attention exponentially.

"Hi Joe," she had responded to my greeting after the end of the workshop earlier that day, a Friday, her adorable tilted smile causing my heart to shudder. It hijacked my nerves after I had attempted calming them for my daring moment.

"Uhm ... Uh ... Well," my tongue stumbled much worse than my alcoholic stupor caused my feet that night. "I ... uhm ... are you..."

That marvelous, infectious smile tightened and lost its existence in her eyes. And then two other playwrights, a shorter man who chose to wear impeccably tailored suits and colorful scarves as his identity, handsome and charming, and a tall, lean raven haired woman with a model's build and intelligent and intense blue eyes and tattoo swathed skin saved her from me.

"Ready Lindy?" asked Michael, the modestly statured pale skinned dandy with loosely curled short brunette hair that looked to be from a permanent.

Lindy turned to him and nodded, and before following behind the handsome couple glanced back at me with a shrug and saddened eyes as if saying, "I might have been with you if you had a backbone."

The fifth of our group, Serena, a pretty if chubby Mulatto with whom I spent the previous weekend mutually relieving sexual frustration, (Of course she had been the aggressor basically pulling me into her bed after an evening of clubbing. My shyness around relative strangers made it necessary.) the weekend ending with realization, at least on my part, of our sexual incompatibility, belayed hope that we could at least become friends when she actually laughed at my suffering. And she seemed so nice.

Swiftly walking, almost running, I rushed out of the ACT Theater space and began my quest for drunkenness, wandering from tavern to tavern with increasingly unsteady steps.

Like an actor appearing suddenly in spotlight on an unlit, opaque black stage as if by magic, the voice from the alley became a skeletal face, taut leathery skin defining the bones beneath, thrusting itself beyond the shadow of a building and into the yellowy cast of a street light. His grin only made his skin tighter. Tight wrinkles crinkled like parentheses around his wide mouth. Perhaps because of the tight skin, his eyes looked enormous and gazed at me intensely, black holes at the center. Maybe his sudden appearance compared more aptly to a snake head popping out of its hole. With his narrow nose curving back at the nostrils the elderly man looked more like a snake than any man I ever saw.

"Nickolas Postumus," his deep voice reverberated. A long narrow hand, age spotted and veiny appeared in the light stretching towards me.

"That's okay," I responded, refusing the offered shake. I wanted to bolt but my feet stubbornly held me in place.

His hand dropped but his grin remained. "It's Greek," he said.

"What's Greek?" I asked.

"The name. Spelled without the h. But I haven't always been. I've sloughed off several skins in my lifetime: Japanese, Celtic, African, even American Indian for awhile." He pulled himself completely out of the shadows and I saw a lean man in black denim who could look me eye to eye. Me being six and a half feet tall that didn't happen all that often.

"You?" he asked.

"Half Brooklyn Jew and half Missouri Southern Baptist," I responded.

"That's a story I bet," he chuckled.

"I guess," I shrugged.

"Waiting on somebody?"

"No unfortunately."

"That's a shame. A handsome young man like you looks all wrong without a sweet filly under his arm."

"Yeah," I replied. "I'm just too fucking chicken."

He chuckled and shook his head. "Walk with me son."

Matching his loping steps I walked beside him except when passing through crowds of fellow imbibers flowing out of closing bars as if regurgitated.

Eventually I asked, "Where are we going?"

"Does it matter?" he asked

"Not really."

"Didn't think so."

A couple of lopes later he asked, "What's your gig?"

"Oh, I write plays and act. I used to write poetry and I wanted my words to be said out loud."

"Whoa there young man," he said behind me, having stopped. I turned and caught his gaze before looking away losing the staring contest. "A writer, hunh?" he said at last. "Need some inspiration?"

"Don't writers always?"

He chuckled. "I got it in spades, kid. Interested?"

I thought about it. I realized it was the writer in me that got caught by the spider, that got swallowed whole by the snake. Being young has its advantages of course, but to me its greatest disadvantage, especially growing up suburban and fairly comfortable and without a lot of the friction of neediness or desperation at least in terms of the basics of food and shelter, there wasn't a heck of a lot of intense life lessons. It also put me in his grasp because I'm naïve as hell. Being without experience and shielded by comfort can get you that way. Being a little dull, a little slow on the uptake in realizing things probably didn't help. "Maybe," I smiled.

"Goddamn I knew this would be a night," he crowed. "Heard the stars been getting aligned and the moon's in Uranus," he cackled.

"Uhm, I'm straight," I gulped, remembering my naivety in full splendor when a non descript man befriended me in New Orleans and ended up luring me to his hotel room, his gadar broken I guess because I made a quick and easy exit.

"I'm not much for cornholing all that often kid unless it's a tight young filly with a dripping hole beneath it if you know what I mean."

I nodded remembering a one night stand where the girl actually preferred ass fucking though it might have had something to do with some problems inside her vagina like vaginal warts, but I preferred not thinking about that, dwelling on my first and only anal sex and the unique pleasure derived from it.

"It's just an old joke, son. You could be my son you know. I did a lot of damage over the years in all my wandering and you got my height and all.

"I kind of doubt it. My mom's not the cuckolding type and I've got my dad's bulbous nose unfortunately," I told him rubbing it.

We stopped outside an all night deli/grocery store. "Buy me a quart of malt liquor and a liverwurst sandwich," he ordered. "You got some money on you?" I tightened and he guffawed but his eyes narrowed. "If I wanted to rob you, I'd have you in my web in the alley no problem. No it's not about me alleviating you of your money, but a friend alleviating you of your frustrations."

He waited on the street. I got myself a corned beef on rye and ale and a couple hundred dollars spit out of the ATM they had inside.

"Are we going to sit and eat?" I asked when I returned with brown bag in hand.

"Almost there," he replied.

A block later he stopped in front of a nondescript door with a check cashing place on one side and a sandwich shop on the other, both shuttered, and pressed a button above a smudged name I couldn't read. I placed us in the Tenderloin only a couple blocks from my efficiency apartment and near ACT as well. I had gone full circle that night in my wandering.

He waited a couple minutes patiently. Finally a female voice through a small metal speaker asked "Yes?"

"Nick," said my curious new companion. And the door buzzed except it wasn't necessary as an overweight middle aged man with shirt tails untucked and short hair a bit wild held the door for us, his eyes failing to meet ours.

We trudged up two flights of stairs under naked bulbs, the boards complaining. He opened a frequently painted white door and I followed him inside. Once I passed through the door, entering a hallway with three doors along the wall across from the entrance door and one ending the hallway on my right, Nick locked the door with a deadbolt. He removed his black denim jacket revealing his black cotton shirt beneath and hung it on a hook by the door. I used a second hook to hang my black leather jacket revealing my blue and red checkered flannel shirt. I followed him into what turned out to be a combination kitchen/dining room/family room where I spotted a raven haired beauty with azure blue eyes sitting at the square, dark wood dining table. Brushing back her thick tangle of hair she frowned at me. I barely noticed what with her plentiful cleavage exposed by a loosely fastened burgundy robe, the nipples threatening exposure as well.

"Hey Snake," she said, then sipped at a deep red wine, its source a wine bottle with Greek lettering sitting near the center of the table.

"Helena, this is..."

"Joe," I told her and him as well, having never given him my name.

"I'll grab a couple more glasses," she sighed, rising from her seat and revealing her voluptuousness and her thick creamy thighs that emerged from her short robe near their top. Like her barely concealed nipples, her pussy lips or anything covering them threatened to be exposed. Joining Nick at the table, I watched the supple movement of her thighs that played beneath the robe and when she stretched for the cupboard to retrieve glasses, witnessed the bottom edge of a white cheek appear. It made my penis stiffen and elongate. She exuded pure sensuality.

When she turned, the bottom of her robe opened and I saw a tiny black triangle hiding her genitals. Looking up as she approached me to set down my glass, her frown had relaxed but only to reveal nothing, an expressionless beauty.

While pouring our wine the upper gap of her robe expanded and I saw the edge of a small areola, a deep brown. She sat and sipped and we sipped as well. The wine was rich with tannin and the tartness awakened my sense of taste.

"Delicious," I told her.

At last she smiled. "My mother's vineyard in Greece," she said. "Snake let me stay with her this past winter."

"Snake?" I asked.

"One of my nicknames," Snake told me with a shrug.

"He let you... ? She's your mother," I inquired.

"Genetically yes," she explained, "but it was the first time staying with her for any length of time since I reached my teens."

Snake changed the subject. "I take it Naomi and Betty are out?"

Her expressionless demeanor returned. "Yes. Betty all night. Naomi should be returning in a couple hours."

"Good. Good. And you?"

"Busy, Snake. It's Friday."

Just then her cell phone buzzed, rattling near the edge of the table. She glanced at Snake and he shook his head and she shut off the phone. And studied me.

Snake swallowed down his wine and grabbed the paper bag I had set by my chair and pulled out the sandwiches and the beers. The first sandwich encased in white paper he opened and handed to me. He opened his and began to eat.

"Want some?" I asked Helena.

"Yes please. I'll grab a plate." When she moved, I watched. Her body put a spell on me that resulted in hardening flesh and heightened senses. I smelled her sweet odor, a mix of natural and purchased musk that stirred me further. Handing me a serrated knife, she nodded when I placed it at a place on the sandwich giving her a little less than half. After the cutting she downed her glass of wine and I did also and she scooted her glass towards the quart bottle of local ale and I poured it full and filled my glass as well.

"I bet Snake didn't explain much," she said between bites.

I shook my head and smiled. "I have no clue what's going on."

For some reason she laughed deep and full throated and thrilling.

Snake smiled. "He's a writer, Helena. He's going to record my life."

With a nod, the laugh quieted, her reply came with a serious expression on her beautiful face. "A work of fiction because no one will believe it's true. You should have Naomi illustrate, make it even more salacious, put it in brown wrapping in the adult section as a graphic novel."

Continuing his reptilian smile, he nodded. "Good idea."

"So is he taking me in trade?"

"Only my percentage," he said.

She eyed me. "How much you got, Lover?"

"Uhm."

"Do you find me attractive?"

I swallowed my mouth full of sandwich, nearly choking on it. "Very."

"So how much you got?"