Dating Mara Lontez

By J.S. Frankel

For Nelson Benjamin, former juvenile offender, seeing Mara Lontez, an alien come to Earth in a role to do good, in action, is one thing. Meeting her is another, and running from the law, well, that’s a different story altogether.

Nelson Benjamin, eighteen, the owner of a criminal record who only wants a fresh start in life, is given his chance by Mara Lontez, an alien come to Earth, and also by a shadowy government agency known as the Agency that Mara works for.

Mara has super-powers, and Nelson finds himself in the position of being her confidante, her guide to human life and its ways and mores, and eventually, her boyfriend. Serving truth and justice and whatever else comes with it, Nelson does his best to help Mara fit in.

However, as with all things, agendas rule, and he discovers that the Agency isn’t what it seems and its goals under its leader, Colton Samel, differ wildly from its stated purpose. By the time Nelson and Mara discover the truth, it may already be too late.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eXtasy Books Inc
• Release date: Jan 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781487428105

Book preview

For Nelson Benjamin, former juvenile offender, seeing Mara Lontez, an alien come to Earth in a role to do good, in action, is one thing. Meeting her is another, and running from the law, well, that’s a different story altogether.

Nelson Benjamin, eighteen, the owner of a criminal record who only wants a fresh start in life, is given his chance by Mara Lontez, an alien come to Earth, and also by a shadowy government agency known as the Agency that Mara works for.

Mara has super-powers, and Nelson finds himself in the position of being her confidante, her guide to human life and its ways and mores, and eventually, her boyfriend. Serving truth and justice and whatever else comes with it, Nelson does his best to help Mara fit in.

However, as with all things, agendas rule, and he discovers that the Agency isn’t what it seems and its goals under its leader, Colton Samel, differ wildly from its stated purpose. By the time Nelson and Mara discover the truth, it may already be too late.

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Dating Mara Lontez

Copyright © 2020 J.S. Frankel

ISBN: 978-1-4874-2810-5

Cover art by Martine Jardin

All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

Published by eXtasy Books Inc or

Devine Destinies, an imprint of eXtasy Books Inc

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Smashwords Edition

Dating Mara Lontez

By

J.S. Frankel

Dedication

To my wife, Akiko, and my sons, Kai and Ray—thank you for making each day special. Also great thanks to, in no particular order, Joanne Van Leerdam, Eva Pasco, Julia Blake, Sara Linnertz, Harlowe Rose, Mirren Hogan, Rose Montague, and too many more people to name.

Chapter One: The Idea

June seventeenth, Portland. A park. Noon. Cleanup job.

Sweeping up leaves and hauling trash away wasn’t my first choice of things to do. In fact, if someone had given me a list of things that constituted sheer drudgery, then cleaning up a park would rank dead last.

However, it was that—or prison—and no way would I ever go back. Been there, done that, and if picking up garbage kept me out of lock-up, then that’s what I’d do.

Hey, jailbird, get to it!

Nice compliment—jailbird. Said comment came from Larry Landon, my middle-aged, fat and slovenly overseer du jour, and the only person who’d given me a job after I’d aged out of foster homes and then after my unfortunate incarceration.

Since he was my boss, I had to do what he said, or else say hello to the street and add in a lot of less-es—jobless, homeless, and needless to say, friendless.

Oh, wait, I was already friendless. That left jobless and homeless, two prospects not worth looking forward to.

Yes, sir, I answered, mustering up my friendliest voice and hating every second of it. Play nice, play nice... why? Because you need this job, that’s why!

With my trusty pick, I speared a few crumpled cans, some paper, and two—ick—used condoms. I shoved the cans in the non-burnable plastic bag I carried with me and put the paper and mini-hats in the burnable bag. They’d be collected later.

It was a nice day, sunny and warm, but I took no joy in it as I cast my gaze around the area. Garbage was strewn everywhere. Couldn’t people use the trashcans?

Rhetorical—they couldn’t, or they didn’t want to, hence good ol’ me doing their job for them. Tomorrow, I’d clean up another park or an apartment building. That was the deal.

While I worked, I mentally kicked myself for getting into this mess. Exactly fifty-seven days and an untold number of minutes ago—that’s how long it had been.

Yeah, I’d hooked up with some losers. My bad, my idiocy... my fault. They were older than I was, in their late twenties, and me, eighteen, just out of high school and kicked out of my foster home for fighting with their favorite son, I had nowhere else to go. No cash, no future—in short, I was broke and desperate.

In a donut shop one day, I sat staring out the window when this big, bearded, tattooed dude walked in with another smaller man. The bigger guy carried a plate with one chocolate donut on it, and he placed it in front of me. Have this.

What was this, a pickup? Uh... no thanks. I’ve got my own, I said, pointing at my half-eaten donut. It was stale, but better that than nothing at all.

Hey, kid, it ain’t what you think. I’ve got a deal for you.

If it involved something sexual, forget about it. I’m not looking for a good time. Try someone else.

He chuckled. I’m not into that, either. What’s your name?

Nelson Benjamin.

Okay. Listen up. I’ll make it worth your while.

Long story short, he pulled up two chairs, sat with his friend, and in a quiet voice, he told me about making some easy money. Sure, it involved something illegal, but since my cash flow was nonexistent, greed outweighed caution.

It’ll be easy, the ringleader said. By now, he had a cigarette working. The bluish-gray smoke covered us, and it made me cough. I hated the smell, but for the sake of amity, I said nothing.

Our table near the window offered a perfect vantage point to map out our target—Ernie’s Electronics. Lots of people came out carrying big boxes. That meant beaucoup bucks.

According to George—we went on a first-name basis, only—there were a lot of employees at Ernie’s, but only one night-watchman and two security guards.

First off, the place does good business. See all those people goin’ in and comin’ out? That’s what it’s like pretty much every single day.

Brad asked, What about security? He was the second man in on the job. I was the third.

George glanced at the store and then at him. It’s light. Like I said, there’s one night watchman, some old guy. There’s just two other security guards, and we can handle them.

Mr. Ringleader inhaled mightily on his smoke and then blew a perfect ring at the ceiling. We got disguises. I stole some of their cleaning uniforms. When they come in to clean up the place, we take them out first, then enter. No one will figure it’s us.

Smart, Brad said.

George shot him an annoyed look. Yeah, it is. Anyway, we go in, clean up, and then wait. The employees always leave first, exactly at six. The owner’s next, and after he locks up, the night watchman and the security guards check-in.

He downed more coffee. I know their schedule. The owner always leaves the cash inside. Friday’s his banking day.

So we hit him on another day, Brad said. Simple.

George speared him with a vicious glare that made Brad, all of five-four and one-hundred-thirty pounds of skinny nothingness, wilt. Just who’s doing the planning here, Brad?

You?

Damn right. Shut your mouth and listen.

George calmed down enough to add, So, we’re already in uniform. Once the store’s locked, we take out the night watchman or the security guards—whoever comes first—tie them up, and then grab the money and leave. Simple.

He knew the ins and outs of casing and then robbing places—or so he said. In his mid-thirties, he’d had experience.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have hooked up with a guy who wasn’t remotely competent at robbing places. After all, he’d been in jail twice, so that should have been a dead giveaway right then and there.

However, me being desperate and kind of naïve, I figured I’d get my cut of the money, go somewhere, and start over.

George was still puffing away and he took another noisy gulp of coffee. So, we follow the plan. They’ll probably have at least sixty thousand in the till, maybe more.

He stubbed out his cigarette. That’s about twenty thousand each. Then we go our separate ways. Agreed?

Brad nodded. With a spotty complexion, a big beak for a nose, and a prominent Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down in his throat like a lure, he reminded me of a baby robin.

George turned to me. Nelson, you’re in, right?

When I hesitated, he leaned over the table. You’ve been in some tough spots before, am I right?

I’d told him about my foster home hell. Uh, yeah.

I been there myself when I was your age. I need someone who can throw fists if he has to. Got me?

Me, throwing fists? I’d done my share. My parents had disappeared when I was three. One day they were around, and the next, they weren’t. I’d spent the next fifteen years shuttling between the local orphanage and foster homes.

The orphanage wasn’t so bad. The kids there were tough, but the counselors always pushed for equality. Instead of fistfights, we’d had boxing matches, and I’d learned the hard way how to take care of myself.

At the age of ten, though, it was foster home time. The movies always made them out to be nice places, with loving, caring parents. The cinema made a kid’s childhood seem like paradise.

In my case, my childhood consisted of a lack of food, beatings, and overall anguish. Nearly all of my foster folks had been mean-tempered, coarse, and violent, in some cases. Some of the other foster kids carried knives. They didn’t fight fair.

Then again, life wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair when my parents left. It wasn’t fair when the social services people placed me with uncaring people who pretended to be human. And it wasn’t fair that no one ever took my side.

So, I’d fought back. I’d been small as a kid, but when puberty kicked in, I’d shot up to six feet, worked out, and the fighting I’d done got me the necessary survival skills.

After one particularly bad experience in a foster home, the authorities stuck me in juvey hall for six months. The toughest kid there decided to make an example out of me, for no other reason than he wanted to be top dog.

Being honest about it all, I didn’t like fighting, but he’d started it. I finished it. That earned me a beating from the guards and a month in solitary.

At least they’d let me take my textbooks to the cell. I’d never been a great student, only a passable one save English, which I excelled at, but all the same, I’d studied and gotten my high school degree equivalency, and now...

Hey, Nelson, you okay?

The voice came from George as he smacked me on the cheek. What?

You okay? he repeated. You were zoning out, kid.

I came back to reality. Yeah, fine. Let’s do this.

Bottom line, two days later—Wednesday night at six, to be exact—we went into the place after knocking out the regular cleaning crew and tying them up. Actually, George clubbed them over the head with a pistol. Brad and I were too scared to.

Everything went according to plan, except when it came to the night watchman. The guards gave up when they saw the gun in George’s hand. It wasn’t worth twelve bucks an hour to get shot. We bound and gagged them. Easy.

But the night watchman, he was elderly, limped, and his hands trembled. He immediately put his arms up when George pointed his gun at him. Oh, don’t shoot me, please.

George didn’t shoot him. Instead, he knocked the old man down and started kicking him. He kept beating on him until finally I’d had enough and pushed the bigger man away. Stop, already. He’s down!

George turned the gun on me, his eyes wide and spinning. You pushing back? If you do, guess what’ll happen?

I stared down the barrel of death. George was a real hard case, and killing someone wouldn’t bother him.

I’m not pushing, I said, trying to stave off getting blown away. But we don’t need to kill the guy. He’s down, okay?

Brad stared open-mouthed. I think Nelson’s right.

George shot him in the leg. So am I.

Brad fell to the ground, screaming in pain. George then pointed the gun at me, a snarl on his lips. Your turn.

Time stood still. The only thing I heard was the thunderous beating of my heart, my breathing, and then... then a crackle of thunder sounded.

Thunder. George looked up with an expression of growing fear. Shit, someone’s coming.

He didn’t have to say who it was. I knew. It was her.

His finger curled around the trigger. I heard the click of the bullet being chambered, almost smelled the cordite, and imagined the pain of the projectile tearing through my flesh.

Time to die...

He didn’t get another word out as a figure crashed through the ceiling to land between us. Holy Jesus, I’d heard about her, seen her pictures on the ‘net, but I’d never seen her up close.

Now, I did. I took in her narrow, yet muscular back, the long reddish-blue hair, the sylphlike figure, and the bluish-gray bodysuit she wore. Her fame preceded her, bigtime.

Mara Lontez—the object of everyone’s hopes and dreams and a lot more. No one knew where she came from or where she lived. All I knew was that she’d arrived.

I also knew that Mara was an alien and that she’d landed on Earth about six months ago. Yes, aliens existed.

Other facts—she was roughly twenty years old, and she’d been helping the Portland police take down criminals. Heaven help anyone who dared to oppose her.

George did. He shot three times. The bullets bounced off her torso. After that, in a lightning-fast move, she snatched the gun from his hand and crushed it. Now, you’re under arrest, she said in a deceptively calm voice. Sit down.

Screw you, girlie.

In response, she flicked her finger at his nose. The impact of a super powered, iron-hard finger meeting human flesh sent him hurtling into a counter thirty feet away. He hit hard and then lay still.

She turned to me. God, she was pretty. I’d had crushes before, and I’d even had a girlfriend once—a one-night stand, really—but against Mara—forget it.

Mara didn’t have a conventionally beautiful face. Her cheekbones were slanted and rather high, giving her face an upside-down triangle look.

Her mouth was wider than usual, with full lips that were permanently curled up on the right side, giving her a crooked smile appearance.

But it was her startling orange eyes against an ocher-colored background that got me, along with a button nose, that gave her that special—to me—otherworldly look.

Then there were the glyphs, three two-inch glyphs on her right temple. Vaguely Egyptian looking, they were deep, almost as if they’d been carved there. She looked at me with curiosity. Are you okay?

Without waiting for me to respond, she touched my forehead. You’re with them.

Shame flowed through me. Mara could read minds from what I’d heard. Yes. I’m guilty.

A peculiar smile crossed her face. You are, but you’re not all bad.

Mara then went over to Brad, who’d fainted. She put her hand on his bleeding leg, and the bullet popped out a second later. One second after that, the wound closed. Apparently, she had healing powers as well. Legendary!

A voice reverberated from outside. This is the police!

Oh, hell, shoot me now—the law had arrived. Mara, her odd smile still in place, told me to wait. I’ve got this.

Another long story short, she went to the cops, told them what had happened, but she conveniently left out the fact that I’d been part of the gang.

The police still arrested me as an accomplice. For some reason, the law fast-tracked my trial and I only spent two months in lockup.

Another surprise—Mara showed up at my trial and asked the judge to grant me probation instead of jail time. So granted, and now here I was, cleaning up garbage.

It was better than prison. Sucky job or no, at least I had a place to stay and some semblance of a life. Or did I?

What I wanted most was to thank Mara, although I knew she was out there, doing what superheroines always did—saving the world.

Hey, Larry said, cutting into my thoughts. You done?

I speared the last of the garbage and stuffed it in the bag. Pretty much.

He glanced around. Yeah, not bad. All right. Let’s go.

Larry drove me home. I’d learned how to drive, but he never let me handle the truck. Anyway, for me, home meant a halfway house that I shared with two older men. Thanks.

Larry’s beat-up rust bucket puttered along the street. Whatcha thinking about? he asked.

Oh, uh, just how I got here.

He nodded. I heard. You got lucky. You thinking about her?

Are you another mind reader?

A hoarse chuckle came from him. Get real. She’s untouchable, and you, you’re a punk kid with a record.

True, I had a record, but it would be expunged when I was twenty, so until then, I’d keep my nose clean.

Still, a date with Mara would be cool... if only she’d notice me. All I needed was the chance.

Chapter Two, Part One: The Chance

Three days later. Ellesmere Park, on the other side of town.

Waking up at six AM involved a series of groans—groans, as in the I-don’t-want-to-get-out-of-bed variety—a series of stretches, and then the showering and shaving process began.

Like the rest of the house, the bathroom was old with rings around the sink as well as in the bathtub. The floorboards creaked, it was drafty, and the hot water didn’t always work.

Still, it was a place to stay. My fellow boarders worked for a moving company as their part-time jobs. We took turns cleaning up the place and doing the shopping.

I didn’t know what the other boarders had been in jail for. They never told me, and I didn’t ask. I only knew that they’d been in jail for a decade or more each.

Whatever, they had their problems, and I had mine. My mirror image showed a gaunt face caused by lack of decent food, a lean but still muscular physique, and green eyes on a nondescript visage topped off by short black hair.

At times, I wondered what my parents looked like. I’d been so young when they disappeared. Some people said they always remembered their mother’s voice or their touch or something personal, something intimate.

Me, nothing registered. A psychologist or psychiatrist would have said it was trauma-induced amnesia, but that wasn’t the case. I’d been too young at the time.

I did remember, though, all the lousy so-called foster families I’d been with. Remembering them wasn’t worth it...

Hey, Nelson, I gotta pee. You done in there?

A banging on the door followed the question. It was Ralph, one of the boarders. Yeah, hang on.

I exited the bathroom, a towel wrapped around my waist. Ralph, fifty-ish, portly and balding, hustled past me. Thanks.

The door slammed shut.

My room—a ten-by-ten-foot affair with just enough space for a bed and a table on which rested an old computer—waited. A beat-up old closet housed what few clothes I had, and a single dirty window overlooked a tiny garden.

I got dressed in my grungy-looking orange overalls—they reminded me of a new prisoner awaiting his first day in lockup—went downstairs, grabbed a couple of slices of bread from the fridge, quickly scarfed them down, and then went upstairs to wait. Larry would swing by at seven-thirty.

While waiting, I checked out the news on the ‘net. Damn, Mara had stopped a bank robbery in Portland last night, and she’d refused yet another offer to appear at the White House. She did so politely, but firmly.

"As someone who has been given a home on this planet, I am very grateful to the United States government for offering me shelter.

Still, I cannot be seen as favoring any particular politician, even the president, she’d said at a recent news conference.