Very excited! My new novel, Thawing A.C. Nielsen, is now up and available for "pre-sale" (just $2.99 for Kindle or other ebook format, then price goes up before the holidays) on Kindle here:
http://amzn.to/2bULRD1
Newly posted there-- a 5-star review from one of the top reviewing companies! Until it goes "live for sale" there won't be any customer reviews or samples-- that happens Oct. 18th. There will also be a paperback version up soon. Check it out and please spread the word. I need all the publicity help I can get since I am not giving away my book to a mainstream publishing house!
I am wondering if any of you would consider reviewing the book. It will be released on Amazon/Kindle on October 18th. I need reviews from regular folks posted to amazon on the release day, if possible. You get a FREE pdf, word.doc or .mobi (Kindle ebook file) copy and plenty of time between now and mid-October to read it. Let me know, friends!
From the current-day Gloria with Kate in the last chapter we do a two-chapter flashback to Gloria's past when she was a star in radio and TV. Here I was able to tap into my knowledge of jazz and jazz history. There is also some R-rated stuff here- and I did my best to write a sex scene without it turning into Fifty Shades Of Crap...er, I mean Gray!
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Gloria and Ray, October 1961
The members of the Raimondo (Ray) Machado Quintet, accompanied by their wives, rolled into San Francisco for a Tuesday through Saturday engagement at the Black Hawk, at the corner of Turk and Hyde in the Tenderloin district, down near the bottom of Nob Hill. The district was famous for its jazz clubs, bars, billiard halls, and wild goings-on. Dashiell Hammett lived there for a while and he portrayed his famous character, Sam Spade, as living in the district at 891 Post Street. The club suffered from stained carpeting, lousy plumbing, and other problems, but the musicians didn’t care about the peeling paint and the backed up toilets. They just wanted to jam. Billie Holiday and Ella had sung there, but the club was best known for showcasing the best of the bop world, both hard and cool—Miles, Monk, Dizzy, Coltrane, Chet Baker, Ahmad Jamal, Stan Getz, plus Gerry Mulligan and other wet behind the ears West Coast Cool players all played there. On a Tuesday or a Wednesday it might be blues in the night—a local piano trio, with dirty needles and used condoms littering the alley out back. But Friday or Saturday it could be heaven on earth—beautiful young women in slinky red dresses sipping fancy drinks at the bar, and name touring acts with intense young men wailing on their shiny horns.
“You ready to get over to the club, Ray?” Gloria asked.
“Yeah, sure. Jesus, who’ll show up on a Tuesday night at nine? If no one shows we’re just playing for ourselves.”
“You can play for me, Ray. Which dress?” Gloria held up a couple choices.
“Neither. You look mighty fine in that sexy satin slip,” he said, arching his eyebrows and walking around behind her, wrapping his arms around her and caressing her warm, soft belly. They could see themselves in the full-length mirror in the hotel room. It was a turn-on for them both.
“Mm,” Gloria moaned softly. Ray could hear her breath quicken. She placed her hands on top of his, then pushed her ass back slowly into his groin, sending a not-so-subtle message to the bulge in his crotch. Oh, she wants it now, right now, Ray thought. He could feel his cock growing harder and harder, his balls tingling. His hands slid up to her breasts, the sweet mounds of tantalizing flesh. He teased her nipples through the sheer fabric until they were hard. Her breathing grew even faster.
“Ray, what are you doing?”
“Feeling you up. You like?”
“Mm, yeah. You like my tits? You wanna cum all over them, baby?”
“No, I wanna fill you up, fuck you hard.”
“Yeah, Ray, talk dirty to me. Real dirty.”
“I’m gonna bend you over and fuck you hard. Fast and hard. Like an animal,” he said as he started grinding his cock at her sweet ass. They kept watching themselves in the mirror. He started pulling his pants down.
“Yeah, fuck me, Ray. Throw me on the bed and fuck me, baby. Come on!”
“Yeah, here we go.” He pushed her roughly onto the bed, her face buried in the pillows. He pulled her ass up in the air and yanked down her damp panties. Her heat and scent drove him crazy when it hit him. His cock got harder and harder, ready for action.
“Come on, Ray. Come on, give it to me.”
He pushed hard, one damned hard penetrating thrust. She gasped loudly, then started panting. He thrust in and out. Hard thrusts, which she met with a variation of her own. They were a doggy-style fucking machine. On and on. Faster and harder.
“Ray, you like Veronique’s titties?” Gloria said out of nowhere.
“What?”
“You like her tits? I saw you staring at them.”
Ray slowed down his thrusting, then stopped, even though he stayed inside her. What the hell is this all about? “No, I like you, I like your titties. Come on, let’s do it,” he said, thrusting harder again.
“Okay,” she said, picking up his rhythm.
Geez, he thought, she just ruined this. Killed the moment. He slowed down again.
“Ray, what’s the matter?”
“I’m trying to make love to you and you ask me if I like someone else’s breasts? That’s weird.” He felt his erection going down.
“I saw you staring at ’em. It’s a fact.”
Ray stopped thrusting. “Geez, you’re crazy, Gloria.”
“Yeah, I am!” She quickly reached down between her legs and put a vise grip on his balls with both hands.
“Shit, stop it. That hurts. It’s not sexy at all.”
“Keep fucking, Ray. Come on, get it back up and be a fucking man.”
Ray couldn’t help himself, Gloria’s power play made his cock harder, his full balls aching from the pressure she kept on them. He thrust like a madman. In and out, harder and deeper.
“That’s it, Ray. Harder, harder. Harder. Cum now, cum, goddammit,” she yelled. “Now, now, now!”
Ray’s head felt like it was exploding from the quick rush of dopamine. His cock spasmed over and over, way longer than usual as it pumped his hot cum inside her. She kept hold of his balls, squeezing everything out of him. He couldn’t tell for sure if she came or not. She wanted to mindfuck me—grab my balls and make me cum or rip ’em off. Be the boss, intimidate me. She’s getting crazier. I bet she stopped taking the pills Dr. Gordon prescribed.
Gloria finally released her death grip on his testicles. He plopped down next to her on the bed. He didn’t know what to say. What the hell was all that about Veronique’s breasts? It wasn’t talking dirty, it was an accusation. That’s Rollo’s wife—out of bounds. Band members didn’t do that to each other. Yeah, Gloria’s definitely weirded out. Won’t even talk to me now. Look at her, lighting up her Pall Mall and now the silent treatment. Still trying to mess with me. Fucking castrate me. That wasn’t making love.
After a while Gloria stood up and padded off to the shower. Ray heard her turn on the water. All he could do was shake his head. “Hell, where is this gonna wind up?” he muttered out loud.
The Tuesday night crowd was decent. A mix of locals and more-dressed-up traveling business types. Some had beautiful young escorts on their arm. After all, the Tenderloin was an easy place to procure whatever a man with some dough wanted. The band members’ wives sat together in a dark corner so Gloria wouldn’t be spotted by some stumbling drunk fan. The girls dressed low-key, saving the fancy dresses for the weekend. After a few tunes, Ray noticed the wives giggling a lot when Gloria was talking. Shit, is she giving them all the juicy details of that strange quickie two hours ago? Oh well, what can I do about it? Jojo, the piano player, was going chorus after chorus on “Cherokee,” giving Ray time to observe Gloria. After a while it looked like the other women were shunning her. What was she telling them? About grabbing my balls like a crazy woman? I don’t think they’re that kinky. If that’s what she told them, no wonder they’re ignoring her now. Ray grinned. “Serves you right, Gloria,” he muttered. He was so deep in thought that Calvin had to elbow him hard back to reality. He almost missed coming back in on the repeat of the melody.
“Man, where yo’ head at?” Calvin whispered hoarsely once the tune ended.
“It was pounding Gloria a little while ago. Sorry, man. It was intense. I think she’s over there telling the girls all about it.” He didn’t care to tell Calvin how weird the sex had become.
“Hell, no,” Calvin said. “All they talk about is makeup and clothes. And money, man. Money, money, money. They shoulda married advertising executives or sumpin’. Listen, stop thinking about sex and play your horn. Do what I say.”
“Yeah, Calvin. I got it. Won’t be no problems, boss,” Ray said with a grin.
“Yeah, yeah. Shut up, asshole! Blow some spit outta that horn and play the damn thing.”
Wednesday night. A smaller crowd than Tuesday. Go figure. Weekday gigs, hardly worth doing. The boys began their second set with “Round Midnight” in a new, avant-garde arrangement by Ray. After an intro and the full head, Calvin took up the first solo on his tenor sax. As he finished, the small crowd lazily applauded. Ray was next. He started with the tiniest germ of an idea, a single note on the dominant tone of the mournful, yet harmonically complex tune written in 1944 by Thelonious Monk. Ray’s single spark traveled in strange syncopations above the half notes in the bass part. Then suddenly, a flurry of eighth notes appeared, outlining ascending and descending ninth and eleventh chords through the changes of the head, then back to the single tone, but now up an octave. The sidemen exchanged glances. Where was Ray going with this? Then a new rush of eighths and sixteenths, but this time the storm of notes outlined modern quartal harmonies borrowed from contemporary classical composers like Bartok and Hindemith. The true jazz aficionados in the room stopped slumping over their drinks and sat up straight, trying to follow Ray’s leaps of improvisational genius as he spun out ever-longer phrases. They tried to hold on while Ray led them through the storm to the Promised Land. Jojo kept feeding Ray even more complex harmonic underpinnings for the free-play, nodding his head at Ray. You want that? Yeah? Okay, I gotchoo. Go here now? Yeah, I’ll catch you—sharp 11, man. Yeah, that’s it, I got you! Yeah, minor with a major seven, Ray? Yeah, sure!
Ray’s quicksilver notes hung in the air with a strange, yet beautiful logic—a musical vision of Utopia all right there and then in a dark, smelly club in the Tenderloin. When the solo ended, the room erupted in applause, drowning out the rhythm section as they headed into the coda. Ray and Calvin joined in for the last few measures, the string of secondary dominants everyone knows if they’ve ever heard the tune. Then a fadeout with bowed bass and mallet-rolled cymbals dying away into the distance. The crowd went crazy again. Everyone in the band stared at Ray.
“Man, I wish Monk coulda heard that,” Calvin declared. The other men nodded.
“I’ll tell you this, Miles Davis wouldn’t want to hear it—he plays that tune. You just done run circles around Miles, Ray!” said Rollo, the bass player.
“Well then don’t tell him!” Ray said, still sweating profusely from his gymnastic efforts.
“Jesus, Ray, you’re like from a different planet. I wish someone was recording that,” Jojo said. “Catch it for posterity.”
“I can do it again. Go get a recorder somewhere. Tomorrow night. I know every note I played. If you wanna hear it again.”
“You mean you wrote it out? All that crazy stuff? You memorized it?”
“No, I improvised it all,” Ray said. “But I can tell you every note I played… unless you don’t believe me.”
“No, man, I believe you. I ain’t disagreeing with anything you got to say!”
“That really is a fuckin’ great tune, isn’t it?” Ray smiled and winked at Calvin.
“Yeah, Ray, damn fuckin’ great tune,” Calvin agreed. “Hey, you ever met Monk?”
“No, but I’d like to.”
“We gotta go out east, New York, sometime. Play that for Monk. See what he thinks,” Calvin said.
“Yeah, see what he thinks,” Ray echoed absentmindedly. The magic moment was suddenly over. Gloria’s crazy shit was already back on his mind.
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