Anthony Boucher - Ed McBain’s Mystery Book, No. 1, 1960

“True, Robbie. Very fun.”

It was. I’d talked to Robbie several times before. She was a model, part-time actress, part-time cocktail waitress. I’d met her during a part-time-cocktail-waitress period and we’d had fun yacking, but this was our first date, first outing together. The beach had been the right choice for sure. We were completely alone here, sea on one side, half circle of cliffs on the other. The only ways in or out were along narrow paths down the cliffs, one at each end of the beach.

I put Robbie on her feet again and she winked at me, tossed her hair, and pranced away like a skittish colt. I got the camera focused on her, took a long shot, and then pushed the little lever that moved the adjustable lens, to bring her up close in the view finder, and zoom, right up there! It was wonderful, and got even better. These were shots I would look at when I got old, to get me young again.

“Shell.” Robbie called, gyrating around, “I never told you.”

“Told me what?”

“Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve had a suppressed desire to be a striptease dancer.”

“Aha, so that’s what you’re doing out there?” I lowered the camera and grinned at her.

I thought something moved against the skyline a couple of hundred yards away, up at the top of the cliffs. I glanced over there but nothing was in sight. A comber hit jagged rocks at the cliff’s base and spurted thick feathers of spray high above them. Maybe that was what I’d seen.

Robbie laughed. “I’m just getting loosened up now. But really — I’m serious. Just once, just once, I’d love to really do it! It’s crazy, I know—”

“No, it’s not.”

“—but I almost have to fight it sometimes.”

“Robbie, dear, don’t fight it. Don’t you know suppression can warp your tender little brain all out of whack? You can get whacky, you can get... complexes and all that jazz.”

“Some of those girls must have fun when they slither out on the stage” — she made a little slithering motion — “and sway and wiggle around” — she made some little swaying and wiggling-around motions — “and then... get all wound up... and let... go — Oh, what am I saying? I almost got carried away.”

“Don’t stop, don’t stop. You were just going good there.”

She laughed again. “I’ve seen them on the stage in the lights. The men just whoop and holler, you know it?”

“Yeah, I know it. In fact—”

“And they actually whistle when the girl glides around and then stops and... gets all wound up... and lets... go — Oh, there I go again.”

“Drat it, you didn’t go. Robbie, you can’t just... are you going to leave everything so... all half-finished... and just dangling like—”

“I tell you what I’ll do, Shell.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll do it. Do a strip-tease, right here, I mean, just like on a stage. And you can make a movie of it — if you promise never to show it to anybody but me.”

“I promise!”

“You won’t think I’m awful—”

“What a ridiculous—”

“—or a brazen hussy, or bad or anything?”

“No, no—”

“I just feel so free...”

“Free...”

“... so good...”

“... good...”

She’d been prancing about, but now she stopped and stared at me, head slightly lowered, smiling, white teeth pressed together. “I’ll really do it — unless you stop me.”

Well, you know it: I sure as hell didn’t stop her. Still smiling, she began to dance again. Slowly at first, then a little more wildly.

“Make the movie!” she said, laughing.

I shot a few feet of film as she spun and arched and whirled. I thought something moved again on the edge of that cliff, but just then Robbie stretched both hands behind her back, reaching for the bowknot of the bikini bra. And I forgot to look away. The movement made her breasts seem to swell, burst forward against the cloth as if they were going to thrust completely through it

She pulled at the strings of the bra and it loosened, started to fall. But she brought one arm forward quickly, pressed her hand against the middle of the cloth, held it there while the outer edges fell, half-baring the white roundness of her breasts.

Well, it began feeling as if my blood were vulcanizing the lining of my veins, as if I were cooking from the inside out. I could actually feel the increased heat of my skin. Because there was something unique about this Robbie, a kind of wild witchcraft or mesmerism, an electrical atmosphere all around her, impalpable and invisible but there just the same.

It was like getting hit with an invisible sap, almost as if, when she stood twenty feet away and I looked at her, there was really no distance between us. As if she moved in some fourth dimension of her own — and that fourth dimension was sex. It wasn’t anything conscious or purposeful; it was just there, all the time, and you couldn’t ever be completely unaware of it even when she was sitting still. And she was not sitting still, she was moving, swaying almost lasciviously now, the bra sliding, slipping.

And I guess I slipped, mentally, into some kind of different dimension myself. Because there were men on the brink of the cliff now, two of them clearly outlined against the sky. A tall man and a short one, the shorter man slumped, held almost erect by the other. Part of my mind noted those other movements, registered them all, but none of it penetrated more than a few cells deep into my brain, not at first.

Robbie laughed softly, delightedly, let her arm fall to her side, the pink brassiere dangling from her fingers. Sunlight silvered the tops of her full, bare breasts, shimmered on them as they swayed and trembled.

On the cliff, the men awkwardly moved a step or two forward, onto the very edge, seemed to float above the emptiness at their feet.

Robbie spread her legs and leaned back, away from me, shoulders rocking slowly, then faster, faster. The film mechanism stopped. She straightened again. I wound the camera quickly as she twirled the brassiere around her head, threw it to the sand. I put the camera to my eye again, let film click past the lens. She stood in one spot for seconds, posing. Body straight, head back, hands gliding slowly up her sides and past her face, brushing her thick, red-brown hair with the backs of her hands and letting it fall, tangled, against her shoulders.

The taller man gave the other a shove. He went over the cliff’s edge, fell, turning. Robbie’s hands were fumbling at the side of her narrow bikini trunks. The falling man hit a projecting ledge of earth, skidded, went spinning over the side, arms and legs flailing crazily. There was another forty feet of space between him and the rocky beach below.

It was sudden, quick. I knew what was happening, but dimly, vaguely. It was occupying more of my mind. Not quite enough yet.

Robbie said something to me but I didn’t understand her bubbling words. The bikini briefs were untied now, held up only by the light touch of her fingers, hands at the curve of her hips. She leaned forward slightly, breasts swaying, slid the bikini briefs down. It seemed to me that she moved very slowly — and that the tumbling man fell very slowly, too. The pink cloth slid downward, her hands brushing the white flare of her hips. Then I heard the thud.

He hit the beach almost two hundred yards away, but I heard the dull, deadly sound clearly. Before, it had been like a silent movie, shadow without substance; but that ugly sound suddenly made it real. I jerked my head. The other man was scrambling down the path.

From the corner of my eye I saw Robbie bend forward, raise one leg, reach and grab something pink before she straightened up. Only now the impressions were reversed. Robbie was on the periphery, and in the center of my consciousness was — murder.