Max Collins - The first quarry

I didn’t know who that was, either, but I said, “I won’t lie to you. I don’t want to give you false hope-he is cheating.”

She sat there with her fists clenched and her chin quivering and she stared at the wall across the way, which wasn’t worth staring at really, having a nondescript winterscape framed there (screwed into the wall, to keep me from sticking it in my suitcase). Her eyes were hard but they were also wet, glistening with emotion, hate, love, the works.

I asked, “You didn’t have any doubt, did you?”

She shook her head, red curls bouncing. “No. No. This is typical.”

“Isn’t this just about getting the goods on the guy? So you can finally pull the plug on this marriage and come out smelling like a rose on the financial end?”

She nodded.

I got up and went over to the cans of beer. I pulled the ring top on a Pabst and handed her the can and she sipped at it delicately. I pulled a ring top on another and returned to my place on the couch. I took a drink and set it on the floor. Wasn’t that thirsty, but she was greedily consuming hers now, gone from sipping to gulping.

I said, “You don’t have any kids, do you?”

“No. Didn’t I tell you that? No.”

She put the beer back on the end table, then got up and went over to the bed. She took the gun from the pillow and she turned around and the nine millimeter was huge in her orange-nailed hand. Her expression was a little crazy. But crazy enough.

She said, “You know I could just kill the son of a bitch.”

“Not a good idea. Give me that.”

“Or maybe you could. Would you kill him for me?” She seemed a little drunk. Maybe that hadn’t been her first beer.

“No. That’s not a toy.”

She handed it to me, with a babyish pout that, oddly, was the first thing that had made her look her age. I took the weapon and held it in both hands; I’d never felt the metal so cold.

She plopped down next to me again. “One of us should kill that miserable prick.”

“Yeah, well, not tonight.”

Then she started crying, and I slipped an arm around her and she sobbed into my chest. Now and then she would say, “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?”

So I told her there was nothing wrong with her.

This went on a while.

Then she got up, suddenly, and ran to the bath-room, taking her little purse along. I thought maybe she was going to throw up, and I did hear the toilet flush, but when she came back, she’d redone her makeup, the mascara having run all to hell.

And she looked good again. Very good. Damn good. And weirdly together, her face devoid of emotion, devoid of anything but those attractive features, the kind of blank prettiness you see in advertising.

She positioned herself in front of me.

“How old are you?” she asked.

I told her.

“I was in junior high when you were born,” she said.

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Would you believe grade school?”

The Get Smart reference made me laugh.

She took off her sweater, yanked it over her head with magnificent casualness. She stared down at me; so did the bullet bra.

“Would you believe,” she said, overtly Maxwell Smart now, “kindergarten?”

Her hands went behind her to undo the bra. I looked away, the gun still in my hands. This was wrong. Fucking the target’s wife was wrong. I could get in ten kinds of trouble. A hundred. She was a beautiful, sad, troubled woman and she was taking her bra off and I was about to get fucked several ways, not all of them good.

Her breasts had needed no help from the bullet bra. Sure, they drooped just a little, but that was what my hands were for. I reached up and caressed them, globes that overflowed my fingers, her aureoles large and puffy, and then I suckled them and the nipples grew hard and long, and I was hard and long, too, so I pulled her down on the couch and I climbed on her and we kissed or mostly I kissed her, nuzzling her neck and worshiping those breasts…

She slipped out from under me and had a naughty-child look as she stood there and wriggled out of the skin-tight slacks and revealed a healthy reddish pubic patch and when she half-turned to toss the slacks away, I saw how incredible and full her ass was, dimples so deep you could drink champagne out of them. If you had champagne.

Then she was on her knees and unbuttoning my pants and she gave the porno girls a real run for the money, sucking the tip, then sliding her mouth down, then up and down and licking around and making me wonder what the fuck that dipshit husband of hers was thinking. I almost came in her mouth, but she knew just when to stop and she smiled up at me, those eyes incredibly blue, and got to her feet and walked to the bed, hip-swaying till I was drunk with it, and it was only about six steps.

She grabbed a pillow out from under the covers and put it under her hips and lifted herself to me and opened herself like a pink flower in a red bush, eyes glistening, pussy too, and she asked, “I’m not so bad, am I? Not so bad.”

“No,” I said. “Just enough.”

The rest you probably read in Penthouse Forum.

We finished the four beers, though Dorrie had three of them, and had another enthusiastic fuck, this time on the couch with the curvy gal sitting on my lap facing me, and she was pretty drunk at that point and her face wasn’t looking so hot, no make-up and kind of saggy, but her body held up fine and anyway I hadn’t been laid in a couple months.

She gathered her clothes and padded into the bathroom to freshen up. I heard the shower going and thought about joining her, but my dick was as red as a radish and I thought the better part of valor was just to get my own clothes on and call myself lucky.

Her purse had been in there, so when she emerged she was fairly put together, and I suggested we go downstairs for a nightcap. I had an ulterior motive, which was to make sure she didn’t spend the night in my room-I needed more freedom than that-and I was pleased when she accepted my invitation.

She had a Vodka Collins and I had a gimlet while we sat in a booth and played PI and client. The “band”-a guy with a guitar and a gal with a keyboard doing horrific soft rock with drum-machine backing-was at least not very loud. The guitarist was perched on a stool and wore a velour jumpsuit and pink shirt; he smiled and sang back-up. The girl, in a gypsy-pattern peasant dress and seated behind her keyboard, did the lead vocals in a whispery folky voice just perfect for “Which Way You Goin’, Billy?” Perfect in the sense that “Which Way You Goin’, Billy?” would make great background music for driving off a bridge.

The tiny dance floor, however, was packed with couples in upright copulation mode, and they soaked up some of the sound, at least.

Dorrie was sucking on the orange slice from her Tom Collins glass. If I hadn’t just been fucked royal, twice, that might have been provocative.

I sipped my gimlet. “I’ll send you the photos.”

She shook the reddish tower of curls. “No. I want to see them. I want you to talk me through them.”

“Huh?”

“Tell what else you saw, you know, in relation to the photos.”

I frowned. “I really think it would be better if you went back to Connecticut and let me send you the photos and report to you over the-”

“I want to see those photos.” She stretched out a palm, like a child demanding candy. “I want to see them… right here.”

I thought about it. “Okay, that’s not a problem. They’ll be developed by noon tomorrow. We can meet in the coffee shop for lunch, and then you can check out and go home.”

The blue eyes, though a little bleary, tightened and grew hard. “No. I want to see that bastard. I want to rub the evidence in his goddamn face.”