Lex awoke in his bed, in the center of his room, in the back of the mall.. or was he in his mall, in the center of his bed, in the back of his room? What a hangover...


The morning was blaring from his window like a bugle that had shredded its mute. He looked around with what seemed to be all of London in his eyes, at its foggiest: His dresser... his mirror... his hooker... his chair...


Rewind.


"What the Hell...?"


"Oh, you're up." A devil's chocolate smile shellacked itself to the stale girl's face. In the clear light she was not as gorgeous as he barely remembered; the shadows were glued like tooth-edged tape between her ribs and above her collarbone, her hipbones made her acrylic-cream skin cocain white as their summit pushed through, her jet black roots were tangling into the faded raspberry syrup of it's additonal mass. But the sun spied the green of her eyes, and their bright, moist colour speared through the air and through the sheets as she stared back at a befuddled Lex.


Lex's raven hair was twisted and plastered to his flustered cheeks and sore neck. His shirt half tucked and the collar creeping off his shoulder. He took a few minutes to gather his head but its jagged edges cut his hands.


"Did I bring you home?" He asked, stroking his scalp.


The girl walked over to the bed and sat down next to Lex's half-suspended shape. He looked at her through crackling eyes and saw that she must have been about his age, although she looked too tired to be young.


"Yeah, you did." Her proximity emitted many scents. Cheap, homemade perfume, over-expired Mabeline, a strange addition of lemon... but underneath these painted fallacies he smelled old, cooked on sex and a metallic, antiseptic remanence on her flesh, taught and dusty with talcum powder. But as he drew back the covers and looked at his buckled belt and half tucked shirt -- snug into his underwear, just as he liked it -- he realized it was only the dozens of other men he smelled in her presence.


"You passed out a few hours ago, after blubbering for about three hours... how's your head?"


"Hey, I do not blubber...!" But suddenly Lex felt his head sink into his abdomen and was choked off in pain. The girl walked over to her spacious purse and pulled out a small flask of tinted liquid. She brought it back to his bed and uncorked it.


"Smells just lovely." His face began to wither with the odor.


"And tastes like the tongue-scraping of a pregnant cow."


"That's disgusting..."


"Oh well, you know, I'm very bad at jokes."


Lex twitched a laugh, and slipped the liquid down his tongue with a wince... it could have been worse.


As his head began to clear he looked around the room, at his clothed body, and then at her. "You didn't..."


Her eyes Ferris wheeled exasperatedly. "I'm a prostitute, not a thief," and under her breath, "Or is their a difference, he thinks."


Lex relaxed then. His hangover was dissipating quickly. "So what's your name?"


"Lyta," she responded.


"What about your real name?"


She held up her arms as if presenting something less than extraordinary but impossible to bereft. "I was born with a hooker name, m'dear." She smiled again, coolly, sharply..


Lex nodded as if in approval. "So, you freelance or what? Traveling? Never seen you at the Casino before."


Lyta pulled her legs onto the bed and pretzeled them tightly. "I woke for Jen. I'm one of the more... expensive ones." She eyed him with a one cocked 'brow, emphasizing this last fact to the disregard of Lex, who nodded again, knowingly.


"Yeah, I've taken a few pay-offs in the past from Jen, to keep his networks above the law."


Lyta snorted a laugh. "So you're the infamous Sheriff Lex, eh?" Lex straitened against the banister proudly. "Well, you have a very cute snore, Sheriff." Lex's smile recoiled crossly.


"I hope it didn't wake you then," he said venomously.


"I never sleep," she retorted. She then arose from the bed with the flask. "You did seem to have a lot on your chest, tho. Surprised your badge didn't pop off long ago." She spoke above the rustle of her bag.


Lex looked at her suspiciously. He began to feel a slight panic arouse his senses... a panic and her bent-stretched behind as she crouched on the floor. "How much did I spill last night? I don't remember a thing."


"Quite a lot. You're first wife went boom, your second, abra kadabra, you're girlfriend got zapped and you are a displeasing pedophile. Did I leave anything out?"


Lex was stammering and bolt upright, too shocked to protest what was presented. He had never been spoken to like this. It grated him like soft cheese, spilling his contents into irretrievable masses.


As Lyta rummaged through her bag, the pungent smell of citrus returned to season the tension in the room.


Lex crinkled his nose. "I..." he began, almost afraid to speak to her now... but he simply coated his voice in mockery and continued, "I haven't picked up this month's Cosmopolitan (or whatever might be a popular female magazine in NZ), but I'm guessing that lemon is the new Channel?"


Lyta laughed as she pulled a glistening yellow orb from the bag she had just tucked the flask back into, and juggled it in one hand. She spoke over one shoulder, "One of the more primordial forms of contraception. When cut in half, that is. I have to say that I'd rather have an acidic dome being repeatedly shoved further against my fallopian tubes than coincidentally falling out of a tree."


Lex chuckled with regained comfort. She may be a bitch, but she was a funny bitch. This made him uncontrollably horny.


"Eh, kind like its own little Pantheon," and he pointed downward.


She gave out a wicked laugh, and latched the purse.


Lex was enjoying her wit. It was refreshing, if not a bit brash. She made him feel clever... whatever he thought that meant.


As Lyta began pacing about the room, she seemed aloof and detached. It was her normal state of expression. She didn't survive as she was without her own Great Wall. But she was concentrating deeply now on keeping a certain few blocks from slipping out of place.


She looked upon the bureau, and began fiddling. She unfolded a bit of felt. Inside was a large chandelier crystal, stemmed by a strand of beads. She gazed at it disenchantedly.


"It's pretty," she said with indifferent approval. Lex's face grew older. "Didn't think a Spartan like yourself would like anything like this..." Lyta's voice drained as she glanced at his shrunken body. She then walked over to where he still sat on the bed, and lifted his chin with one thin, clawed finger.


A woman's crystal, it was, she though. She quirked her eyebrows, balancing them invitingly as she guided his eyes with hers to the glass, which she now held up to the window. He squinted at it's brilliance, before being lead to the opposite wall. A small rainbow flitted near the floor, and Lex felt a smile reemerge from the fathoms of his memories.


Lyta looked at him with stern softness. "Love is simplistic in its complexity, as so many facets of crafted, welted and melted sand makes something as elementary as a rainbow."


Lex turned to her face. The tangents of light illuminating her painted features light a stage illuminates a dancer... fluorescent lights illuminating a corpse . He leaned in to kiss, and felt her shoulder on his lips as she stood up again.


He had the sensation of being apart from his body as he watched her move. She was graceful, not like Tai-San, though, not like a ballerina or an angel. Like air. And her face, her mask so securely fastened to her face, so expertly decorated, iced and dried, it frothed up inside his mind the opposite of what it would intend to: intrigue.


She placed the crystal back in it's cape, and he sighed, "How much do I owe you?"


"Actually, nothing. I get paid to screw not to play psychotherapist." She was pulling on her sleeveless, floor-length coat.


"Won't Jen be angry?"


"I'll tell him I spontaneously began menstruating." She giggled.


But with his best puppy-dog face: "At least stay for breakfast..."