Evan Hunter - Candyland

"Come on in, Michael, we're on the first floor."

He hears a buzzer, twists the knob, gratefully steps into a small foyer with cracked black-and-white tile underfoot, a row of mailboxes on his right, none of them bearing a name. He resists the temptation to look out into the street, see if anyone spotted him coming in. There is an inside door as well, glass panel on its upper half. It opens to his touch the moment he twists the knob. A row of wooden steps leads upward at a sharp angle. A bulb shaded with a frosted globe hangs on a wall to his right. He glances past the steps, suddenly fearful someone may be lurking there in the hallway, sees only a shadowed gloom, and hurries up to the first-floor landing. A door without any marking on it is at the top of the steps. He walks past it, turning right, past the steps he just climbed, past a wooden banister and railings that define a narrow hallway smelling of Lysol, and comes directly to a door at the far end, a brass letter B hanging on it. There is no bell button set into the doorjamb. He knocks on the door. A voice inside says, "Yes?" A girl's voice. She is looking out at him through the peephole.

"It's Michael," he says.

"Just a second, Michael."

The door opens a crack, held by a night chain. He sees a partial face and figure in the narrow crack of the open door. There is a red light in the area immediately behind the girl. He smells incense burning.

"Open your coat, Michael."

"What?"

"Your coat. Unbutton your coat. Hold it open for me, please."

He does as he is told. Unbuttons the raincoat for her, holds it open like a flasher.

"Turn around, please, Michael."

He turns around, back to the door.

"Raise the coat, please."

He pulls the coat up over his hips, as if he's beaming a moon.

"Face me again, please, Michael."

He is thinking "What the hell".

"Sorry, Michael. We have to do this."

He faces the door again.

"Pull up your pants legs, please."

He realizes she's looking for a weapon.

He pulls up first one trouser leg and then the other.

"Okay," she says, "thanks."

And the chain comes off.

And the door opens wide.

"Sorry," she says, "we were held up last week."

A dazzling smile.

"Come in, Michael. Please."

Hesitantly, he steps into the small entryway. He is thinking he doesn't want to be anyplace that gets held up. He doesn't need cops, and he doesn't need crooks, either. He's a respectable architect. He stands there feeling clumsy and somewhat foolish and not a little frightened as the girl brushes past him to put the chain on the door again. He smells the heady aroma of powder and perfume, hears the rustle of satin or silk, feels the merest touch of her breasts as she squeezes past him. And then the chain is in place again, and the door is double. locked, and he is here, he is home, he is safe. She is wearing a flimsy black wrapper over red bra and panties, a red garter belt, black nylons, Her blond hair is frizzed. Her lipstick looks shiny and wet. She seen bursting out of her skimpy lingerie, a buxom bawd standing some five. feet eight-inches tall in black, ankle-strapped sandals with stiletto heels, She is somewhere in her late twenties, he supposes, a girl with an obliging smile, generous hips, and cushiony white breasts.

"Well, come in, come in," she says. "Let me take your coat."

He still feels clumsy and awkward, certain he is blushing, the 01 standing behind him half-naked, breasts behind him, close to him, most touching him again, helping him out of his coat. There is the murmur of voices from the adjoining room. Another girl suddenly laughs, is she laughing at him? Something is going to happen here, he doesn't know what. He knows exactly what, and yet he doesn't really know. He feels this way each time he's with another strange woman, or women, a tight, flushed, clogged feeling that is exciting but embarrassing at the same time, he can't imagine why. It's as if he's in a movie theater watching a particularly thrilling scene that's making him feel ashamed somehow, but he can't do anything to change the scene or affect its outcome. Nor can he leave the theater until the movie is finished. He can only sit there watching the movie, helplessly enthralled. It is like that each time.

"Girls," she says, "this is Michael."

There are not the seven girls he was promised on the telephone. There are, instead, only three in this "nice selection." Four including the frizzed blonde who did the security check and who is now leading him into the room. Even in the dim red light, he can tell that none of these girls are racehorses. In fact, he dismisses two of them at once.

One is an Irish-looking girl, freckle faced, too fat for his taste. Reddish hair and very dark eyes, perhaps thirty years old or so, flopped sloppily on a velvet thrift-shop couch that once must have adorned the living room of an old Romanian lady who fell upon bad times. She is wearing white silk tap pants printed with oversized red hearts. No bra. Red garter belt with opaque, patterned white stockings. Red sequined pumps, like Dorothy's in The Wizard of Oz — but this ain't Kansas, Toto.

"Alice, this is Michael," the blonde says.

"Hello, Michael," she says, and smiles.

The second reject is introduced as Fatima.

She is very tall and slender, with pale good looks that seem to indicate Mediterranean or Near Eastern origin. She wears a silk robe pattered in a floral design and hanging open over black, elastic-topped stockings, black high-heeled shoes — and nothing else. Crisp black pubic hair at the joining of her legs hints fierce sexuality. But the look in her pale blue eyes is hollow and somewhat frightening.

The third girl has possibilities.

There is the long leggy look of a thirteen-year-old about her, though she is surely older than that. Tiny cupcake breasts under a short, sheer, white, baby doll nightgown encourage the image of precocious teeny-bopper. She is wearing high-heeled, white satin slippers with puffy white pom-poms. No panties. Long blond hair on her head. Blond hair shaved close below. Lounging in a doorway that leads to the further reaches of the apartment, an amber light glowing somewhere behind her, she throws Ben a sultry look when she is introduced as Heidi. She could be sucking her thumb as easily as his cock. He is tempted. But there is something frightening about her — he cannot imagine what.

Perhaps the single gold tooth in the corner of her mouth.

Perhaps the wise eyes.

"And you are?" he says to the tall, frizzed blonde who let him into the apartment.

"Cindy," she says. "See anything you like?"

"Yes," he says. "You."

She looks surprised.

"How long did you have in mind?" she asks.

"An hour," he says.

She looks at him again. Appraisingly this time.

"Heidi?" she says. "Wanna take the door?"

Heidi gives him a petulant look to chastise him for his inferior choice, and then walks coltishly to a high stool in the little shelved alcove just inside the entrance door. She climbs onto the stool. Behind her, the red light glows and a wispy trail of smoke rises from the incense burner. A telephone on the shelf above the burner begins ringing. Heidi picks up the receiver. "Heidi," she says, and listens. "She's going upstairs with a client," she says, "I'm on the door." She listens again "Okay," she says, "I'll watch for him." Ben immediately figures some one else has called the number in New York magazine, or wherever else it may be floating around out there, to make an appointment with one of the nice selection of beauties here in this room. He hopes he does not run into whomever Heidi will be watching for, the next man who will be submitted to an anterior, posterior, and lower extremity search in the narrow hallway smelling of Lysol. He thinks for a moment — but only for a moment — that he ought to get out of here. But Cindy — all hip, strut, and insinuation — is already walking toward the amber light beckoning from the room beyond. Uncertain he's following, she glances back over her shoulder, raises an inquisitive eyebrow, and asks, "Coming?"