Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

She looked sluttish and she knew it, and gloried in the knowledge. She’d checked the mirror carefully before leaving the apartment and she had liked what she saw. Now, walking down the street with her handbag bouncing against her swinging hip, she could feel the heat building up within her flesh. She could also feel the eyes of the men she passed, men who sat on stoops or loitered in doorways, men walking with purpose who stopped for a glance in her direction. But there was a difference. Now she relished those glances. She fed on the heat in those eyes, and the fire within herself burned hotter in response.

A car slowed. The driver leaned across the seat, called to her. She missed the words but felt the touch of his eyes. A pulse throbbed insistently throughout her entire body now. She was frightened — of her own feelings, of the real dangers she faced — but at the same time she was alive, gloriously alive, as she had not been in far too long. Before she had walked through the day. Now the blood was singing in her veins.

She passed several bars before finding the cocktail lounge she wanted. The interior was dimly lit, the floor soft with carpeting. An overactive air conditioner had lowered the temperature to an almost uncomfortable level. She walked bravely into the room. There were several empty tables along the wall but she passed them by, walking her swivel-hipped walk to the bar and taking a stool at the far end.

The cold air was stimulating against her warm skin. The bartender gave her a minute, then ambled over and leaned against the bar in front of her. He looked at once knowing and disinterested, his heavy lids shading his dark brown eyes and giving them a sleepy look.

“Stinger,” she said.

While he was building the drink she drew her handbag into her lap and groped within it for her billfold. She found a ten and set it on top of the bar, then fumbled reflexively within her bag for another moment, checking its contents. The bartender placed the drink on the bar in front of her, took her money, returned with her change. She looked at her drink, then at her reflection in the back bar mirror.

Men were watching her.

She could tell, she could always tell. Their gazes fell on her and warmed the skin where they touched her. Odd, she thought, how the same sensation that had been so disturbing and unpleasant all day long was so desirable and exciting now.

She raised her glass, sipped her drink. The combined flavor of cognac and crème de menthe was at once warm and cold upon her lips and tongue. She swallowed, sipped again.

“That a stinger?”

He was at her elbow and she flicked her eyes in his direction while continuing to face forward. A small man, stockily built, balding, tanned, with a dusting of freckles across his high forehead. He wore a navy blue Quiana shirt open at the throat, and his dark chest hair was beginning to go gray.

“Drink up,” he suggested. “Let me buy you another.”

She turned now, looked levelly at him. He had small eyes. Their whites showed a tracery of blue veins at their outer corners. The irises were a very dark brown, an unreadable color, and the black pupils, hugely dilated in the bar’s dim interior, covered most of the irises.

“I haven’t seen you here,” he said, hoisting himself onto the seat beside her. “I usually drop in around this time, have a couple, see my friends. Not new in the neighborhood, are you?”

Calculating eyes, she thought. Curiously passionless eyes, for all their cool intensity. Worst of all, they were small eyes, almost beady eyes.

“I don’t want company,” she said.

“Hey, how do you know you don’t like me if you don’t give me a chance?” He was grinning, but there was no humor in it. “You don’t even know my name, lady. How can you despise a total stranger?”

“Please leave me alone.”

“What are you, Greta Garbo?” He got up from his stool, took a half step away from her, gave her a glare and a curled lip. “You want to drink alone,” he said, “why don’t you just buy a bottle and take it home with you? You can take it to bed and suck on it, honey.”

He had ruinedthe bar for her. She scooped up her change, left her drink unfinished. Two blocks down and one block over she found a second cocktail lounge virtually indistinguishable from the first one. Perhaps the lighting was a little softer, the background music the slightest bit lower in pitch. Again she passed up the row of tables and seated herself at the bar. Again she ordered a stinger and let it rest on the bar top for a moment before taking the first exquisite sip.

Again she felt male eyes upon her, and again they gave her the same hot-cold sensation as the combination of brandy and crème de menthe.

This time when a man approached her she sensed his presence for a long moment before he spoke. She studied him out of the corner of her eye. He was tall and lean, she noted, and there was a self-contained air about him, a sense of considerable self-assurance. She wanted to turn, to look directly into his eyes, but instead she raised her glass to her lips and waited for him to make a move.

“You’re a few minutes late,” he said.

She turned, looked at him. There was a weathered, raw-boned look to him that matched the western-style clothes he wore — the faded chambray shirt, the skin-tight denim jeans. Without glancing down she knew he’d be wearing boots and that they would be good ones.

“I’m late?”

He nodded. “I’ve been waiting for you for close to an hour. Of course it wasn’t until you walked in that I knew it was you I was waiting for, but one look was all it took. My name’s Harley.”

She made up a name. He seemed satisfied with it, using it when he asked her if he could buy her a drink.

“I’m not done with this one yet,” she said.

“Then why don’t you just finish it and come for a walk in the moonlight?”

“Where would we walk?”

“My apartment’s just a block and a half from here.”

“You don’t waste time.”

“I told you I waited close to an hour for you. I figure the rest of the evening’s too precious to waste.”

She had been unwilling to look directly into his eyes but she did so now and she was not disappointed. His eyes were large and well-spaced, blue in color, a light blue of a shade that often struck her as cold and forbidding. But his eyes were anything but cold. On the contrary, they burned with passionate intensity.

She knew, looking into them, that he was a dangerous man. He was strong, he was direct, and he was dangerous. She could tell all this in a few seconds, merely by meeting his relentless gaze.

Well, that was fine. Danger, after all, was an inextricable part of it.

She pushed her glass aside, scooped up her change. “I don’t really want the rest of this,” she said.

“I didn’t think you did. I think I know what you really want.”

“I think you probably do.”

He took her arm, tucked it under his own. They left the lounge, and on the way out she could feel other eyes on her, envious eyes. She drew closer to him and swung her hips so that her buttocks bumped into his lean flank. Her purse slapped against her other hip. Then they were out the door and heading down the street.

She felt excitement mixed with fear, an emotional combination not unlike her stinger. The fear, like the danger, was part of it.

His apartment consistedof two sparsely furnished rooms three flights up from street level. They walked wordlessly to the bedroom and undressed. She laid her clothes across a wooden chair, set her handbag on the floor at the side of the platform bed. She got onto the bed and he joined her and they embraced. He smelled faintly of leather and tobacco and male perspiration, and even with her eyes shut she could see his blue eyes burning in the darkness.