NoHo Noir Short Fiction: 'Curb Appeal'

Anna Lee-Cheung was nervous. Her mother’s biggest client, a Hong Kong businessman who owned property in L.A., San Francisco and Vancouver, had booked an appointment to view a condo he said he was interested in buying in Pasadena for his son.  

Anna had looked Sebastian Ming up in her mother’s files and found that in the past three years she’d sold him a house in Pacific Palisades, an apartment building in Hollywood and a downtown loft. The file included notations about other property he had considered purchasing; buys that never came about although her mother had apparently spent a lot of time and effort pitching them.

Mr. Ming had sent an exquisite flower arrangement to Elinor’s funeral, Anna remembered, so he’d apparently appreciated her time and effort.

Her mother’s assistant, now her assistant, didn’t have much to say about Sebastian Ming except that he had wasted a lot of Elinor’s time. Anna got the impression she didn’t like Mr. Ming very much.

Office of Lee Realty

Toluca Lake, CA   81602

3:12 p.m.

Anna didn’t like encouraging familiarity from Ceelie, who was five years older than she was and inclined to think they were pals, but she knew the receptionist was a champion busy body who would be happy to fill in the blanks that Google had left.

“So, Mr. Ming …” Anna said, dropping the name like trolling chum in front of a hungry shark.

“You mean Ming the Merciless?” Ceelie replied, her eyes shining with unshed gossip. 

“Are you serious?”

“That’s what your mother used to call him when she couldn’t make a sale.” Ceelie glanced around to make sure nobody could overhear them. “He’s richer than God,” Ceelie gushed. “And so handsome. His mother was a British model who went to Hong Kong on a photo shoot and married his father after only knowing him a week. Isn’t that romantic?”

Ceelie lived for love. In her spare time, she was writing a paranormal romance about a misfit werewolf and the girl he loved; a girl who looked an awful lot like Ceelie. She kept the manuscript in a file on her office computer and would have died if she’d known Anna had found it one night while looking for information on apartment rentals.  

Anna had read the unfinished manuscript with enjoyment and regularly checked back to see if Ceelie had added any new chapters. She would have died if Ceelie had known that.  

“They say his father is head of one of the Hong Kong Triads.”

“So Mr. Ming is a gangster?"

“No, his father is the gangster. He’s a businessman.”

Anna was pondering the implications of that when the phone rang and interrupted their conversation. Leaving Ceelie to deal with her business, Anna wandered back into her mother’s office.

Her office.

Hotel Amarano Burbank

322 North Pass Avenue

Burbank, CA 91505

9:45 p.m.

Sebastian Ming had turned out to be nothing like what Anna had imagined. She had known he was handsome; she hadn’t been prepared for his charisma; his sheer aura of power; his air of command.  

He’d hired a car and driver for his visit to California and he’d insisted Anna allow his chauffeur to transport them both to Century City so she wouldn’t be stressed out by the traffic. He’d inspected the condo briefly, made a few calls to Hong Kong and then told her someone from his office would be in touch to hammer out the details of the sale.  

Anna had done the math. Hong Kong time is 15 hours ahead of California time; someone was in his office at 7 a.m.

Sebastian had invited Anna to dinner to celebrate the sale and she’d accepted with pleasure when he suggested they go to Pinot, a French restaurant in Studio City that was one of her mother’s favorite places to eat.  

Afterwards his driver had brought them back to Sebastian’s hotel for a drink and one thing had led to another.  

Already feeling warm and relaxed from the wine she’d drunk at dinner, Anna was happy to accept a glass of champagne when Sebastian ordered a bottle from room service. It was Krug Clos Du Mesnil 1995 and it tasted like carbonated heaven. 

When Sebastian began kissing her, his mouth tasted like wine and cigarettes, so different from the flavor of Devin’s chewing-gum kisses. When Sebastian began removing her clothes as if ceremoniously unwrapping a gift, Anna responded in kind, urgently stripping him of jacket, then shirt, then pants; eager to press flesh against flesh.

Anna had lost weight since leaving her job at Gold Standard but she was still self-conscious about being naked. Whenever she and Devin had sex, it was with the lights off and the music cranking as a distraction.  

Not that they’d had sex lately. She just hadn’t felt like it. He had not really been there for her since her mother died, and she was still annoyed about Valentine’s Day. Her father had sent her flowers but Devin had spent the day playing World of Warcraft with his stoner friend Ash and hadn’t even realized it wasn’t just an ordinary Monday.

With Sebastian there was no sense of awkwardness, no hesitation, no shyness at all. “You look like your mother,” he’d said as he tumbled her onto the hotel bed. “So beautiful,” he’d added before his words were lost in groans and grunts and sheer sensation.

Anna had lost her virginity to her high school boyfriend and had hooked up with Devin in college. Both of them were more enthusiastic than talented in bed and neither was particularly well endowed. Not having much experience for comparison, she’d never had any complaints.  

Now she did.  

Sebastian’s technique made Devin’s ministrations seem as mechanical as a cheap vibrator. And despite what Anna had always told herself, size does matter.   Sebastian had given her the most intense orgasm of her life, a head-thrashing, sheet-clenching spasm that left her emptied and drenched with sweat.  

“Ellie,” he had whispered in her ear as he’d climaxed and Anna had realized then that Sebastian was having sex with his mother’s ghost and not with her. She could live with that.

Unlike Ceelie, she wasn’t a romantic.