Heat of Passion

Win Liberte, Beverly Hills, 1997

The phone next to the bed rang and Jonny stirred beside me, her bare leg cocked over my thigh, her knee warm pressed against my groin. I had the Heart of the World in my hand and I wasn't in any hurry to answer the phone. I knew who was calling. It was the front desk informing me I had a visitor.

I held the walnut-size diamond between my thumb and fingers, letting it catch the morning light from the window. Pieces of stars, that's what diamonds were, the hardest substance on earth with fire a billion years old trapped inside. And no diamond on earth had more fire than the one I was holding -- a forty-one-carat blood diamond. Not the "blood" of conflict diamonds that fueled African civil wars, but a rare fire-red diamond. It was a gem with a history. Murder, lust, greed -- the worst of the deadly sins -- were part of its pedigree.

There was no other diamond like it in the world.

Vanity and greed, that's what they say the diamond industry is based upon. And that the human race could be relied upon for an endless supply of both. The stone I held in my hand was able to fuel explosive levels of both vices.

My visitor wanted the diamond. She was part of the history. Not the part where kings who possessed it lost their thrones, but war, murder, lust were contributions she made to the diamond's bloody history.

The phone rang again and Jonny pushed her knee harder against my groin, sending a shot of desire through me.

"Answer it," she said.

"It's your mother."

"Fuck her."

I have.

"Send her up," I told the caller.

Jonny rolled over onto her other side. Her name in Portugal was Juana, but at the Sacred Heart Academy in Beverly Hills, she was known as Jonny. At eighteen, her body was taut, skin-tight, golden brown, kissed by the Lisbon sun. Her breasts were small and firm, honey melons with rosy nipples that always looked like they were excited. Young, beautiful, wild. She reminded me of a young lionesses cub I saw once in Africa, big enough to rip with teeth and claws but who needed a warm stomach to snuggle up to at night.

I started to get up and Jonny grabbed my cock and pulled me back down.

"Fuck me before she comes up. I want her to smell my cunt on you."

I pushed her away. "Jonny, you're too much for me, I need a grown woman who isn't going to wear the point off my pecker."

I felt sorry for kids her age, kids who are light years away from their parents and anyone else over thirty. Older people have nostalgia for the good old days, but there are no good old days for people nurtured in a culture of sex and drugs. What do they talk about when they meet up with old friends The times they were getting high together Getting laid The first rave party they attended Raised in an era when Baywatch plastic sexiness was confused with sensuality, Jonny's generation was one in which a good-night kiss often started with the guy unzipping his pants, a generation that didn't believe in Santa Claus and whose dreams were all digital.

She came to me last night, in pain from being young. I put her to bed on the couch. In the middle of the n