pet, Marguerite, for departing from town so abruptly, without even bothering to ask whether her absence would be convenient at this time. He was particularly irked at her for not calling to let him know where she had gone until three days in New York had elapsed.
However, he understood the redhead’s motives well enough and couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement when she described how perverse their Laura could be.
Hugo threw a good party, with a full bar, amply furnished buffet tables and continuous atonal music. Everyone important in Random Point showed up. The remainder of the guests were divided equally between Hugo’s associates in the antiques business and his numerous colorful and bizarre connections in the B&D scene. It made for a compatible mix. There were even crossovers. Why shouldn’t a collector of rare manuscripts also collect antique Hermes riding crops?
Marguerite and Laura sauntered in through the front door at ten, confidently leather clad and glamorously sleek. The milling throng of revelers crowding the foyer and staircase swallowed them up almost at once. Most of the women who came from the New England B&D scene wore leather, glove-tight latex or shiny PVC. Mixed in with these glamorous creatures was a traditional selection of vampires, mummies, ghouls, witches and sorcerers. There was also a small avant garde fringe who arrived dressed as five pieces of sushi, a couple that came as a plug and socket and several Easter Island statues.
“I see Marguerite’s gotten Laura into her first pair of 5” heels,” Hugo remarked to William Random, who stood beside him on the gallery above the choked hall and staircase. William made a splendid barbarian in a leather torso harness that displayed his impressive muscularity dramatically. Studded gauntlets garnished his forearms and lacing sandals latticed his massive calves. His full leather facemask might have been as menacing as its designer had intended if it were not for the horn rimmed eyeglasses, which he’d strapped on over it.
“Do you think Laura will recognize me?” William queried his companion, leaning his granite abdomen against the railing.
“Considering you have no clothes on, I wouldn’t be surprised!” replied Hugo patiently, wondering if it would really be possible to remain William Random’s friend while actively pursuing his wife.
Hugo, who considered fancy dress appropriate for everyone but himself, wore his usual well-tailored evening clothes. Like William’s, his gaze followed the forms of Marguerite and Laura, wriggling through the crowd in the foyer. “Your wife looks even cockier than Marguerite tonight,” Hugo observed at the moment eye contact was fixed between themselves and the girls. But Laura’s mien of careless defiance melted at the sight of her husband.
“Marguerite, let’s go up!” Laura touched an elbow-gloved hand to her friend’s white shoulder.
“Ouch!” Marguerite cried suddenly. Looking back over one bare shoulder she saw she had been struck upon the right cheek of her large, luscious bottom with a toy arrow, which adhered to the surface it had struck, by means of a suction cup tip. She yanked it from her leather-clad rear end as she raked the press of guests surrounding her with a glare.
“Did you see that?” Hugo laughed.
“That was priceless,” William agreed, of the minor assault on the haughty Marguerite.
“No it wasn’t, look over there,” Hugo pointed to the doorway of the cloakroom, where a tall, ruddy blonde with a thick ponytail, dressed as Robin Hood, stood laughing behind her hand.
“Who’s she?” William asked, admiring the robust good looks of the flaxen haired imp, who even now was reloading her bow from the quiver of arrows slung across her back.
“That’s Marnie Price, Randy’s little sister.”
“Why haven’t I noticed her before? She looks like a real New England girl.” William said with approval.
“Drinks like one too.”
“Doesn’t seem to impair her aim though.”
“You’d have to be legally blind to miss that target,” Hugo remarked ungallantly.
His companion agreed, while still admiring the voluptuous posterior of Marguerite, who now gave it a brief rub, after breaking the arrow in half with a toss of her glorious mane.
As the girls filtered up through the crowd on the stairs, the roar of a Harley skidding to a stop outside let everybody know that Randy Price had arrived.
Price enjoyed making an entrance. He was twenty-eight, tall, lean and swaggering. He wore a black bomber jacket, ripped tee shirt and black jeans. From his left ear an inverted cross dangled and his skull had been completely shaved, the first sight of which caused not only Laura and Marguerite, but also every other woman who recognized Randy to gasp.
The manipulative C.E.O. of Price Enterprises was William Random’s most serious competitor. He was a Harvard business school drop out, but this had not stopped him from pulling his family’s floundering land development company out of the red several years before and building it into a corporation with wide holdings all over New England and enormous liquid assets.
With his uncanny business acumen and total lack of ethics, Randy’s deals seldom blew up in his face. The incident with Damaris Perez was not typical and he was still steaming about her trading him bogus bids for genuine drugs.
He scanned the halls and stairs impatiently, ignoring all who greeted him, but acknowledging Laura Random with a smirk. Laura turned and fled up the stairs. Her violent reaction was noted by William, who now folded his arms belligerently, as he considered the immense annoyance Randall Price had become.
Even as William confronted the fact that Laura had cheated on him with his unscrupulous competitor, he found his wife especially appealing in the cherry red leather dress that clove to her buttocks, sleek thighs and firm bosom so enticingly.
“Why does Randall keep following Laura?” William suddenly demanded of Hugo. But Laura was with them before Hugo could answer, throwing her arms about William’s neck. He embraced her without hesitation, locking his arms about her so tightly that she squealed as he lifted her off the ground and swung her around.
“Well?” he demanded. “Have you decided to come home?”
“Yes,” Laura said shyly, hiding her face against his chest.
“Good!” Nothing could have been more emphatic than this pronouncement.
Laura had expected him to be stern and remote. The quality of warmth did not often emanate from William Random, but it enveloped her completely at that moment of reunion. Then Randy was upon them.
“Hi Laura! Like my haircut? Billy, how’s it going? Hugo, no costume?” Randy was bubbling with abrasive energy. William’s hands balled into fists as he let Laura go.
“A good haircut is no substitute for the frontal lobe job you really need,” William pointed out.
Before Randy could respond, Laura asked Hugo to take her to the bar.
“Don’t go, baby,” Randy said, touching Laura’s bare shoulder. “There’s so much I want to say to you.”
“Leave my wife alone,” William told him.
“She’s got a mouth,” said Randy; “And we both know she can use it. Why doesn’t she tell me herself?”
