Макс Коллинз - Quarry in the Black

“Absolutely,” I said, and kissed those sticky red lips.

She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, I’d say she cooperated fully. She stepped back, gave me an appraising look, and out of nowhere said, “I’m taking a shower. Alone.”

“I could stay on my side, and you could stay on—”

She reached up with two hands and lifted the Afro off. Fucker was a wig! But initial shock past, I noticed she looked every bit as pretty with her cropped-to-the-skull actual hair, which added to the hoop earrings gave her a more African look.

“You could probably use a shower yourself,” she said, resting the wig on the dresser. She took off the earrings, too. “It’s been a very long day.”

“It has,” I said.

“I won’t use all the towels.”

“Thoughtful you.”

She’d been in the stall five minutes when I joined her in there, naked as she was, and asked for the soap over the noisy spray. She wasn’t mad at all. Didn’t even pretend to be. We washed each other, soaping each other’s backs and fronts, among other things, leaving the faces to their owners but little else. No kissing, no fondling. Just getting squeaky clean.

Without platform shoes, she was a good three inches shorter than me, slender with cupcake breasts riding high on her rib cage, tilted up impertinently, her pubic thatch trimmed back, like the hair on her head. That tight, firm flesh pearled with water might have been a sculptor’s masterpiece left out in the rain.

Gentleman that I am, I let her exit the stall first. We both toweled off. It was all very proper, except for my raging hard-on. After exiting the bathroom, I switched off the overhead light but left the nightstand one on.

Naked, I sat on the edge of the bed. “Okay if I take this side? I have trouble sleeping on the left side for some reason.”

Her response was interesting. What you’d call non-verbal.

She knelt before me and starting sucking me. She was gentle but thorough, taking me to the edge of a cliff where I wanted to jump. Then she looked up at me, no makeup, no lip gloss, and I bent down to kiss her perfect face, her mouth, her neck, her shoulders, her breasts, while my hands glided over supple smoothness.

Then she drew away, rose and walked around the bed, elegantly, like a fashion model on a runway who forgot her frock. She lay down on the bed with her knees up, her legs long and sleek and just slightly spread, a sideways slice of pink peeking out of her close-cropped bush.

“I’ll take this side,” she said.

I was on her and in her in a moment, no talk of rubbers or the pill or was this too risky, just two people who had to make love right now, had to merge into one, moving slowly, and then not so slowly, pumping, thrusting, trying to find my way ever deeper inside of her, as she worked to let me in, building to something outside of time or practical concern.

When I finally eased off her, she got up and moved gracefully back into the bathroom. With considerably less grace, I used the Kleenex box on the nightstand. She returned in sheer panties and got her cigarettes out of her purse. She stood at the window, where the drapes were as sheer as her panties, and she smoked, looking out.

“Help yourself,” she said softly, meaning the Cools that she had left on the nightstand.

“I never got the habit.”

Her lovely long back was still to me. “Oh? Any bad habits at all, Jack?”

“Nope. I rarely drink to excess. I don’t overeat, despite what you witnessed at the Pizza Villa. And I especially don’t engage in unprotected sex with strange women.”

Now she glanced over her shoulder and gave me that saucy smile again, minus the sauce this time. Then she returned to looking out through the sheer curtains, at nothing, or at least that was what I sensed.

“Jack, tonight when we were telling each other about ourselves,” she said, and of course mostly it had been about her, by my design, “there’s something I didn’t mention.”

“Oh?”

“I was married once.”

“Oh.”

“No kids. Didn’t last long. Didn’t know him well, though I wished I could have. I met him one weekend at a church dance and he was going overseas in a few weeks. Back to Vietnam. We saw a lot of each other while he was on leave. Then on impulse we flew to Vegas and got married and had two days of honeymoon and he was gone.”

He died over there.

“He died over there, Jack. I’ve never quite been the same. That’s why I’m so against the war, Jack. That’s why I want McGovern to win so bad.”

She came to bed after a while and turned her back to me again. Lights were off.

I said, “I was married. Wartime thing. Similar conditions. But I didn’t die over there, not so’s you’d notice. Whirlwind romance, like yours. But then I came home and found her in bed with a guy... and the marriage died, even if I didn’t.”

And the next day I went around to talk to the bastard, found him working under his little sports car and I kicked out the jack. Well, he’d called me a bunghole. Now he was deader than my marriage.

She turned over onto her side and looked at me with pity, which I didn’t mind actually, because understanding was in there, too.

But they wound up letting me walk, and the Broker saw the story in the papers and came looking me up...

“Jack... I guess we both have our war wounds, don’t we?”

She went to sleep in my arms. Of course, before long we were facing the other way from each other. That was okay. She snored a little.

Sunday evening, around six, the blue-and-silver bus that had been born the same year as me let us all out at Coalition Headquarters on East Euclid. Staffers and their overnight bags headed in all directions for cars that had been parked on side streets where parking meters weren’t an issue. Neon signs for bars and restaurants had that nice glow you only get at dusk and I asked Ruth if she’d like to grab a bite.

“Love to,” she said, suitcase in one hand and train case in the other.

We’d spent a long day, mostly on the bus, with a non-Nimoy event at the state teacher’s college in Kirksville. Light attendance compared to yesterday and a disappointment, though the Reverend’s rousing speech got great response. If you’re wondering, André had done no business this afternoon, at least not that I caught him at.

“I’ve eaten breakfast at Duff’s,” I said to her. “I wonder if it’s as good at night? Or if they’re even open.”

She was smiling and nodding, and now I realized some of the Afro bounce was due to its being a wig. “They’re open and very good — such a cool funky place. The Croque Monsieur is to die for.”

“What’s that?”

“A kind of grilled cheese and ham sandwich.”

“I’ll try it, but I won’t give my life for it. What about this luggage? We don’t want to lug it there.”

“I have a key,” she said, nodding toward the HQ entry. “I can leave mine inside. Yours, too, if you like.”

“No,” I said, “I’m parked a couple blocks down,” nodding across the street. I didn’t want her to know I was living so nearby, not at the YMCA, which was the address I’d supplied the Coalition. “You slip yours inside and I’ll walk down and put mine in my car trunk.”

That seemed an acceptable plan to her, and she was letting herself in as I walked across the street with my suitcase. Around the corner, I went down the alley, where my Impala SS was parked. For several seconds, I just stood there like a guy on a railway platform who missed his train.

A yellow late ’60s Dodge Charger — well-maintained, nice and clean — was next to the Impala on the graveled, slightly sloping parking area behind our building. Far as I knew, now that my little redheaded waitress had moved on, the third-floor apartment was vacant. So this did not seem to be a new neighbor.