Johnny America

 

El­e­ments of Destruction

by

Lana leaned for­ward, the ice clink­ing in her glass. She fixed him with a stern look. “You know, your prob­lem is you think about every­thing, or you don‘t think about it at all. Or you think you’re think­ing about every­thing but you don‘t even know that the rest of it ex­ists,” she said. He could­n’t help look­ing down her shirt.

“You men are all the same…”

He looked up quick­ly, un­sure whether she’d caught his glance or was re­fer­ring to some­thing else. Or to noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar. She wasn’t look­ing at him any­more, though. Her at­ten­tion was fo­cused on a tiny Pomeran­ian that had wan­dered in­to the room, their hostess’s pride and joy. Its toe­nails tapped on the linoleum too loud­ly for some­thing so small.

Watch­ing the dog’s tiny pranc­ing steps spurred some­thing in him, and he felt a small but sig­nif­i­cant per­son­al­i­ty shift. He reached for Lana’s hair, stroking the blonde tips and her shoul­der un­der­neath. “You know I’ve al­ways had a thing for you…”

“Oh, Jef­frey. What would your wife say?”

He chuck­led, and moved his hand down her arm to rest just be­low her el­bow. “What do you know? She’s passed out over an hour ago.”

Lana’s face was steely. She shook the drink at him. “You’re lucky I’d rather drink this than throw it in your face.”

“So that’s a no?”

“That’s a no.”

She stood, a lit­tle un­steadi­ly on her heels, and strode away to­wards the Pomeran­ian and the rest of the par­ty guests. Jeff stood up and stretched in a way that an ob­serv­er, had there been one, might’ve found con­spic­u­ous­ly ca­su­al. Then he tossed back the rest of his drink and head­ed up­stairs to the guest room to re­claim his un­con­scious wife.

Filed under Fiction on February 14th, 2006

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