Mickey Spillane - My Gun Is Quick

From the river the low cry of dark shapes and winking lights that were ships echoed and re-echoed through the canyons of the avenues. Lola turned the radio on low, bringing in a selection of classical piano pieces, and I sat there with my eyes closed, listening, thinking, picturing my redhead as a blackmailer. In a near sleep I thought it was Red at the piano fingering the keys while I watched approvingly, my mind filled with thoughts. She read my mind and her face grew sad, sadder than anything I had ever seen, and she turned her eyes on me and I could see clear through them into the goodness of her soul, and I knew she wasn't a blackmailer and my first impression had been right. She was a girl who had come face to face with fate and had lost, but in losing hadn't lost all, for there was the light of holiness in her face that time when I was her friend, when I thought that a look like that belonged only in a church when you were praying or getting married or something--a light that was there now for me to see while she played a song that told me I was her friend and she was mine, a friendship that was more than that, it was a trust and I believed it... knew it and wanted it, for here was a devotion more than I expected or deserved and I wanted to be worthy of it. But, before I could tell her so, Feeney Last's face swirled up from the mist beside the keyboard, smirking, silently mouthing smutty remarks and leering threats that took the holiness away from the scene and smashed it underfoot, assailing her with words that replaced the hardness and terror that had been ingrown before we met, and I couldn't do a thing about it because my feet were powerless to move and my hands were glued to my sides by some invisible force that Feeney controlled and wouldn't release until he had killed her and was gone with his laugh ringing in the air and the smirk still on his face, daring me to follow when I couldn't answer him. All I could do was stand there and look at my redhead's lifeless body until I focused on her hands to see where he had scratched her when he took off her ring.

Lola said, "The coffee's ready, Mike."

I came awake with a start, my feet and hands free again and I half-expected to see Feeney disappearing around the corner. The radio played on, an inanimate thing in the corner with a voice of deep notes that was the only sound in the night.

"Thinking, honey?"

"Dreaming." I lifted the cup from the tray and she added the sugar and milk. "Sometimes it's good to dream."

She made a wry mouth. "Sometimes it isn't." She kissed me with her eyes then. "My dreams have changed lately, Mike. They're nicer than they used to be."

"They become you, Lola."

"I love you, Mike. I can be impersonal because I can't do a thing about it. It isn't a love like that first time. It's a cold fact. Is it that I'm in love with you or do I just love you?"

She sipped her coffee and I didn't answer her. She wouldn't have wanted me to.

"You're big, Mike. You can be called ugly if you take your face apart piece by piece and look at it separately. You have a brutish quality about you that makes men hate you, but maybe a woman wants a brute. Perhaps she wants a man she knows can hate and kill yet still retain a sense of kindness. How long have I known you: a few days? Long enough to look at you and say I love you, and if things had been different I would want you to love me back. But because it can't be that way I'm almost impersonal about it. I just want you to know it."

She sat there quietly, her eyes half-closed, and I saw the perfection in this woman. A mind and body cleansed of any impurities that were, needing only a freedom of her soul. I had never seen her like this, relaxed, happy in her knowledge of unhappiness. Her face had a radiant glow of unusual beauty; her hair tumbled to her shoulders, alive with the dampness of the rain.

I laid my cup on the end table, unable to turn my head away. "It's almost like being married," she said, "sitting here enjoying each other even though there's a whole room between us."

It was no trouble to walk across the room. She stretched out her hands for me to pull her to her feet and I folded her into my arms, my mouth searching for hers, finding it without trouble, enjoying the honey of her lips that she gave freely, her tongue a warm little dagger that stabbed deeper and deeper.

I didn't want her to leave me so soon when she sidled out of my hands. She kissed me lightly on the cheek, took a cigarette from the table and made me take it, then held up a light. The flame of the match was no more intense than that in her eyes. It told me to wait, but not for long. She blew out the match, kissed me again on the cheek and walked into the bedroom, proud, lovely.

The cigarette had burned down to a stub when she called me. Just one word.

"Mike!..."

I dropped it, still burning, in the tray. I followed her voice.

Lola was standing in the center of the room, the one light on the dresser throwing her in the shadow. Her back was towards me and she faced the open window, looking into the night beyond. She might have been a statue carved by the hands of a master sculptor, so still and beautiful was her pose. A gentle breeze wafted in and the sheer gown of silk she wore folded back against her body, accentuating every line, every curve.

I stood there in the doorway hardly daring to breathe for fear she would move and spoil the vision. Her voice was barely audible. "A thousand years ago I made this to be the gown I would wear on my wedding night, Mike. A thousand years ago I cried my heart out and put it away under everything else and I had forgotten about it until I met you."

She swung around in a little graceful movement, taking a step nearer me. "I never had a night I wanted to remember. I want to have this one for my memories." Her eyes were leaping, dancing coals of passion.

"Come here, Mike!" It was a demand that wasn't necessary.

I grabbed her shoulders and my fingers bit into her flesh.

"I want you to love me Mike, just for tonight," she said. "I want a love that's as strong as mine and just as fierce because there may be no tomorrow for either one of us, and if there is it will never be the same. Say it, Mike. Tell me."

"I love you, Lola. I could have told you that before, but you wouldn't let me. You're easy to love, even for me. Once I said I'd never love again, but I have."

"Just for tonight."

"You're wrong. Not just for tonight. I'll love you as long as I please. If there's any stopping to be done I'll do it. You're brand new, Lola... you're made for a brand-new guy, somebody more than me. I'm trouble for everything I touch."

Her hand closed over my mouth. My whole body was aching for her until my head felt dizzy. When she took her hand away she put it over one of mine that squeezed her shoulders and moved it to the neckline of the gown.

"I made this gown to be worn only once. There's only one way to get it off."

A devil was making love to me.

My fingers closed over the silk and ripped it away with a hissing, tearing sound and she was standing in front of me, naked and inviting.

Her voice had angels in it, though. "I love you, Mike," she said again.

She was my kind of woman, one that you didn't have to speak to, for words weren't that necessary. She was honest and strong in her honesty, capable of loving a man with all her heart had to give, and she was giving it to me.

Her mouth was cool, but her body was hot with an inner fire that could only be smothered out.

It was a night she thought she'd never have.

It was a night I'd never forget.

I was alone when I woke up. The tinkling of a miniature alarm-clock on the dresser was a persistent reminder that a new day was here. Pinned to the pillow next to mine was a note from Lola and signed with a lipstick kiss. It read, "It ended too soon, Mike. Now I have to finish the job you gave me. Breakfast is all ready--just warm everything up."