William Bankier - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 103, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 625 & 626, March 1994

“Didn’t expect to need this again till October,” she remarked, echoing his thoughts about his car heater. When the wood started to crackle in earnest, she sat down on the cot and motioned for him to join her. He sat gingerly, keeping his distance.

“What’s the favor?”

She didn’t answer. Instead she tucked her feet under her and leaned back against the rough paneling. She was wearing the blue shirt that he had seen Peggy choose yesterday.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately, Sam.”

Her husky voice was pitched a little higher than usual, as if she were nervous.

“I’ve been recalling old times...” She trailed off, and then started to giggle. “Remember when I called you at three in the morning from East Parkerville to come and get me?”

Sam clasped his hands between his knees and stared down at his shoes. Sure, he remembered. She had been desperate, drunk, and incoherent; her date, in an alcohol-enhanced fit of sexual frustration (Sam’s interpretation), had abandoned her in the middle of nowhere. Sam had snuck out of the house and taken the family car, found her shivering on a comer of the six-block stretch that was Parkerville’s “tough” neighborhood, filled her full of black coffee, helped her crawl through her bedroom window — and left. What a chump.

“What a savior,” Glenda was saying. “Daddy would’ve beat me black and blue, I swear he would.”

Sam glanced at her, bemused by the tone of fond nostalgia of this last statement, and she finally caught his eye.

“You were good to me, Sam. Real good. In fact I — well, I’ve been wondering if I didn’t make a mistake, letting you get away from me all those years ago.” Ignoring his expression of polite disbelief, she added, “Hey, scoot over here next to me, it’s cold in here.”

“Glenda,” he said mildly, speaking for the first time, “what the hell are you up to?” But he moved next to her.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, historically speaking, every time you’re re-e-al nice to me you want something.”

She stiffened and pulled away. “That’s a hurtful thing to say.”

He knew that petulance so well. The old Glenda would now have demanded a half-hour of apologies to be civil again. But the new Sam resisted the tug of habit, and maybe Glenda had changed too. Because after a moment she settled back.

“Look, why don’t you put your arm around me — there, that’s better. You can’t believe that all I want is... your company?”

“All of a sudden.”

“All of a sudden.”

“No, can’t say as I believe it.” But he had positioned his arm around her shoulders.

Glenda began speaking haltingly and softly. “I’m sorry if I ever mistreated you, Sam. It seems like all my life people have been trying to get something out of me, and I guess I thought that’s how I was supposed to behave. But you — you’ve always been so gentle and so — so generous.”

“Like a cocker spaniel,” he heard himself say. Her voice was hypnotic.

“Like a friend,” she replied. “Aw, Sam, kids are such fools. I always went for the show — the tight jeans and the strut.” She laughed and brushed the hair away from her face. “I learned the hard way that they don’t mean anything.”

The room was warming and he was relaxing, letting the flow of her words wash over him, not trying to follow their sense. Images of high school — of Glenda — flooded his mind. Glenda sitting in front of him in History, her shiny hair flipped up like a wave of gold. Glenda walking down the hall towards him, wearing — he could see it vividly — a tight blue skirt, a soft blue sweater, and a string of pearls. Glenda in a white dress at the senior prom; by then he was dating Debby, but he was watching Glenda just the same. Glenda—

With a start he came back to the present. Glenda herself, in the flesh, seemed to be talking to him. “There’s something I notice about a man,” she was saying. “I can’t explain it, but something tells me when he knows how to please a woman. And when I saw you at the rodeo the other day...” She tilted her head back and looked at him directly. “I always knew you were a sweetheart, Sam. But I just noticed you’re a real sexy man.”

He looked down at her lazily; his body was seated on the cot but his brain, apparently, was dangling in a comer with the bridles and bits and other hardware.

She reached up and undid his top button.

Oh. Well, now he got it. Now he had it figured out. He was being seduced, he thought calmly, while his pulse rocketed from 60 to 220 minus his age. Seduced by Glenda Cannon twenty years too late. Sure, his sixteen-year-old self would have submitted to crucifixion for this, but now, now it meant nothing.

Nothing? The fire flickering and hissing, Glenda’s shirt stretched across her breasts, the blood pounding in his head? That meant nothing?

Yes, well, what about Claire?

What about her? If she weren’t off gallivanting in Boston doing God-knows-what with God-knows-who, he wouldn’t be here, and horny.

Yeah, but what if Glenda was just jerking him around one more time?

What if she wasn’t? And dammit, she owed him!

While he dithered, Glenda reached to unbuckle his belt.

Startled into roughness, he grabbed her wrist. “Don’t mess with me, Glenda, I’m not sixteen anymore.”

Her eyes widened. “Hell, no, you’re definitely full-growed.”

His brain was now completely out of the picture. He surged towards her. The snaps on her shirt popped open like tiny firecrackers — that was the point of the snaps! — her skin was warm and smooth and smelled of Ivory soap and sweet alfalfa and — and—

God DAMN!

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and dove for her again — and sneezed again, three times in rapid succession, a multiple nasal orgasm.

He sat upright. Glenda was understandably mystified.

“It’s this allergy,” he said dismally. “It’s — well, actually, I’m allergic to horses.”

She pursed her mouth, suppressing laughter. Then she managed to look concerned.

“Is it the room? We could move to the house.”

“No,” he muttered. “No, the truth is, I think... I think it’s your clothes. And maybe... your hair, too,” he added awkwardly. His shame was complete.

Glenda blinked and gave him a hard stare. Her hair? Her glorious golden hair? Then she graciously rose to the occasion.

“You stay right there — I’ll run over to the house and take a shower, I won’t be five minutes. Now don’t you move, darlin’!” And she whisked herself away.

There was something jarringly professional about that “darlin’ ” but it was lost in a nightmare of lust and embarrassment. He groaned and fell face forward on the cot, noting with passing interest that he hadn’t outgrown the capacity to be abysmally, absolutely humiliated. Forever young, that was him.

After a couple of minutes of no Glenda, his brain began cranking up like an old rusty generator. He began to think. And the first thing he thought about was Claire.

Could he do this without completely screwing things up with her? They had never promised fidelity, but it was a tacit rule of their relationship — at least he assumed it was.

Well, put it another way. Could he do this and not let Claire know?

Maybe. Possibly. But it was a moot question, because this was the culmination of twenty years of daydreaming and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let it get away!

Was he?

If he was so all-fired eager to have sex with Glenda, why had it taken him so long tonight to figure out what she wanted? He wasn’t stupid. Was it his natural modesty? His long history of thwarted desire?

Or was it that he knew, fundamentally, that Glenda was lying?