Who: Greed & Lust What: Greed returns home to his apartment. It is occupied When: Monday-ish Where: NYC
A little whistle, a little clickety-click of expensive shoes on sidewalk (for what was life without a swelling accompaniment, a little music to sweeten the day with cash to sweeten the wallet and a shuffle-ball-change of change on the horizon with the steady boom-drum-beat of heels) and a too-quick, too-sharp gait that rattled along with his steps like shots, rat-tat-tat of a militant march back to what was his-his-his. The very best of hotels was fine, American-pie-great and soft sheets and sweet little waitresses downstairs, but time was up and Greed hailed home. Greed grinned his best at a woman passing through the brass and glass doors, all frippery and frumpery and a little dog tucked under her arm that didn’t so much as yap as it whimpered when Greed smiled its way. He remembered that dog; two floors down and a ride in the elevator, it had whizzed on the floor. Corner of the carpet and the elevator-man in peaked cap had coughed as if rich people’s dogs’ piss didn’t stink. The waves of want had rippled off him, had smelled of sweet-sweet-need and ripe desire and resentment curdling away the sour stench of animal pee. A good day. Greed smiled even wider at the dog, until the very backs of his teeth showed wide and white -- snip-snap, little dog, yip-yap away -- the owner didn’t notice. She noticed sliding past him, however, a brush of heavily be-ringed hands and a touch of ‘I’ll take him for every penny’ in the waft of air like perfume and Greed smiled with a rumble of a chuckle that was amenable to partnership, share and share alike, kiddiewinks, for there’s always more to want.
Speaking of want... Neck craned back to peer up at his own window, his little slice of New York City, the worm coiled up inside the apple, sour as blood, Cleopatra with her asp at her bosom and there was an entirely different-but-not bosom to consider. Greed dusted non-existent dust from his suit shoulders, glanced at himself in the glass of the doors and quick-march-step up to the doors and away and up and up and away and stop.
A ‘no hard feelings’ look on the doorman’s face and a curl-snake-smile that shot across the bows, an ‘I have this and you do not’ shard of something taken from Greed that skittered ice against his spine -- oh, Greed did not like ‘taken’. ‘Taken’ as a word, harsh click like a gun against the temple and soft negotiating ‘n’ the kiss goodbye, no no, Greed did not like taken. They looked at his key, and they ran fingers all over it in a possessive, crawling way that he could feel inside his head, crawling like insects against his (well, where a heart ought to be) and then they said, in voices crisp as the cheap polyester shirts they were wearing, that the penthouse was occupied but not by Greed, no -- not Alexander Manon -- and a wrench and a clench and a clutch of Greed’s own gut, twisting-squeezing-needing in a fall-on-your-own-sword sense of desperate fist-clenching avarice. A snarl and twist of the lips, wolf behind the business-suit shifting enough to be seen, to flash behind the eyes, a name dropped and Greed, “Oh I recognize her.” Her, her, stealing and snatching and picking up lost things like a breadcrumb trail to oblivion; they dialled, Greed seethed with borrowed sin until the elevator stopped at the very tip-top and the doors hushed open onto what ought-to-be-should his own apartment.