Elmore Leonard - Out of Sight

He felt her fingers brush through his hair as she kissed him again, still gently, and it was hard-aware of her scent, remembering it-it was hard to keep from eating her up. He put his arms around her, feeling her slim body in his hands, and she brushed his mouth with hers, saying, "What's the hurry, Jack?

You have to be somewhere?"

She knew his voice from the trunk of the Chevy and the look in his eyes from before that, in a glare of headlights, the quiet look in his eyes as he said, "Why, you're just a girl." As he said, "I bet I smell, don't I?" Conversational, covered with muck from a prison escape. If there was a moment, the kind of moment they'd talked about, that would've been it, in the headlights. Now he was clean, his face smooth and hard, her fingers touching his cheekbone, the line of his jaw, a tiny scar across the bridge of his nose. She said, "Sooner or later..

" She stopped and he looked at her over the rim of his glass, about to take a drink. She loved his eyes. She said, "You have a land look, trusting."

"That's not what you were about to say."

She shrugged, letting it go. But sooner or later she would ask him..

Sooner or later she would begin saying things to him and not be able to stop. She said, "Remember how talkative you were?"

He said, "I was nervous," lighting her cigarette and then his own.

"Yeah, but you didn't show it. You were a pretty cool guy.

But then when you got in the trunk…"

"What?"

"I thought you'd try to tear my clothes off."

"It never entered my mind. Well, not until-remember we were talking about Faye Dunaway?"

"I know what you're gonna say."

"I told you I liked that movie, Three Days of the Condor, and you said yeah, you loved the lines? Like the next morning, after they'd slept together, he says he'll need her help and she says"

"

"Have I ever denied you anything?"

" "I thought for a couple of seconds there, the way you said it, you were coming on to me."

"Maybe I was and didn't know it. Redford tells her she doesn't have to help him and she says… You remember?"

"No, tell me."

"She said, "You can always depend on the old spy-fucker."

" "Why'd she say 'old'?"

"She was putting herself down."

"Would you call yourself that, a spy-fucker?"

"I think she was still scared to death, trying to keep it light but hip. Before they ever go to bed she accused him of getting rough. He says, "What? Have I raped you?" And she says, The night is young." I thought, Come on-what is she doing, giving him ideas? No, I wouldn't say that, definitely, or call myself a spy-fucker. Or any other kind."

She said, "You know you kept touching me, feeling my thigh."

"Yeah, but in a nice way."

"You called me your zoo-zoo."

"That's candy, inside, something sweet. You don't hear it much anymore." He smiled and touched her hand.

"You were my treat."

His sheet said no visible scars, but there was a white gash across three of the knuckles on his right hand and half the third finger was missing.

"You asked me if I was afraid. I said of course, but I wasn't really; it surprised me."

"I might've smelled like a sewer, but you could tell I was a gentleman.

They say John Dillinger was a pretty nice guy."

"He killed a police officer."

"I hear he didn't mean to. The cop fell as Dillinger was aiming at his leg and got him through the heart."

"You believe that?"

"Why not."

"You said you wondered what would happen if we'd met a different way."

"And you lied to me, didn't you? You said nothing would've happened."

"Maybe that's when I started thinking about it. What if we did?"

"Then how come you tried to kill me?"

"What did you expect? You could've been dumping the car for all I know, hiding it somewhere, and I'm locked in the fucking trunk. I warned you first, didn't I? I told you to put your hands up."

"Yeah, after I said come on out. You knew I wasn't gonna leave you in there. You start shooting at us."

She thought of the gun and said, "That Sig .38 was my favorite." She watched him fixing up their drinks, the cigarette in the corner of his mouth. In that moment he seemed from another time.

"I've wondered about that," Karen said, "what you were gonna do with me."

"I don't know, I hadn't worked that part out yet. All I knew was I liked you, and I didn't want to leave you there, never see you again."

"You waved to me in the elevator."

"I wasn't sure if you caught that."

"I couldn't believe it. I was thinking of you by then, a lot, wondering what it would be like if we did meet. Like if we could take a time-out…"

He said, "Really?" He said, "I was thinking the same thing. If we could call time and get together for a while."

She wanted to ask, yeah, but for how long? Then what? But she said,

"That day we met on the street, did you know it was me?"

"You kidding? I almost stopped."

"You didn't."

"I wanted to, but I was embarrassed wearing that tourist outfit. I didn't want you to think I dressed like that."

"The black socks with the sandals."

"Part of the disguise."

"I watched you all the way down the street."

"I could feel it."

"You were going to see Adele, weren't you?"

"I don't think we should get into that."

"No, you're right. Or Buddy. I won't ask if he's with you or what you're doing here. Or if you've run into Glenn Michaels yet."

He said, "Don't talk like that, okay? You scare me." He said, "I was trying to remember-Faye Dunaway and Robert Red-ford start kissing..

"

Karen nodded.

"As he's untying her."

"How did they get from there into bed?"

Foley watched her get up from the sofa and hold out her hand to him.

She said, "Come on, I'll show you," and took him into the bedroom. He sat on the bed to take off his shoes, stood up to take off his pants.

Got his socks off. She said, "Are you gonna leave your tie on?"

Watching her undress, Karen getting down to a black bra and panties, he said he wasn't sure if the old ticker would be able to take this. When she got out of her undies and came over to him, standing close to help him with the tie, he was thinking he might Ve died already and gone to heaven. When his clothes were off he looped the tie around his neck again. Seeing her in lamplight before she turned it off he said, "My God, look at you." He had never seen a woman's body like hers naked.

In magazines maybe, but not in real life. In the next few minutes he realized he had never met anyone under the covers like she was: man, all over him with her scent, touching, kissing, saying his name, saying "Oh, Jack," in a whisper that sounded sad. He asked her if she was having fun and saw her face in the light from the sitting room that filtered the dark, saw her smile, but even her smile was sad. They made love and she didn't speak or make a sound until she began to say his name again, "Jack?" He asked her what. But that's all she was doing, saying his name, saying it over and over until she was saying it pretty loud and then stopped saying it. No woman had ever said his name like that before.

"What am I now?"

Lying in his arms in the king-size bed, light from the sitting room almost reaching them.

"You're still my zoo-zoo."

She moved away from him to sit up and swing her legs off the bed.

"Are you coming back?"

She said, "You can always depend on the old bank-robber fucker."

He reached her before she could leave the bed, and sat up, getting close behind her, his hand touching her breasts as his arm came around to hold her against him.

"Are you being funny?"

"I have ta go to the bathroom."

"Are you?"

She said, "I don't know."

He let go of her, watched her get up and go into the bathroom. The door closed. He felt they were coming to the end of the time-out and he'd hear a whistle blow the way hacks blew whistles to tell you to stop doing something and start doing something else. He didn't know what to say to her now to get her back; he wasn't sure if he could put himself in her place to know what she was thinking. He did know how to listen and how to wait; he was good at waiting. If he couldn't get her back, at least for a while-there was no time limit-then he would become serious, not wanting to but knew he would, and they'd play it out.