Lawrence Block - Tanner’s Virgin

“Good.”

“Wouldn’t you care for an English bastard?”

“You talk too much.”

“Silence me with a kiss.”

And it was slow and thoughtful, a sweet sharing with little love and less passion and worlds of warmth and tenderness. Kisses both long and slow, and bits of whispered nonsense, and the comfortable touching of secret flesh.

A little at a time the world went away. The horror of Old Compton Street, the ice-eyed man in the chair, the wire wound round his finger, the sound of the cleaver parting flesh and bone. And the long knife, and his blenched face, and the knife going in and out and in again. All of this faded slowly, as did all the burden of time and place.

Until, in the manner of a surprise guest, passion came.

I touched and kissed her, and her breathing deepened and she clutched me with sweet urgency. A pulse pounded in my temples. She beamed, wide-eyed, and said, “How nice!” and closed her eyes and sighed. I kissed her. I felt her firm little breasts against my chest and her legs, the muscles now taut, against my own. I touched the moist warmth of her loins. She opened for me, and I rolled hungrily atop her, and she said, “Yes, yes,” and we kissed again, and-

And a querulous voice said, “Julia! Evan! Where in hell is everyone?”

A few moments later, when our hearts started again, she whispered that it was Nigel. I knew this. She added that he was awake and in the kitchen. I knew that, too.

“We can’t,” she added.

Again she had put words to the obvious. Our mutual desire was like a tree that had spent a hundred years growing only to be cut down in its prime in an instant. I was still lying on top of her, and I ached with want for her, but-

He called our names again.

“Maybe he’ll go back to sleep,” I suggested.

“No. He sleeps like the dead, but once he’s up he’s up. Oh, it’s light out.”

“Wonderful.”

“Damn,” she said. I rolled reluctantly off her. We looked soulfully at each other. It occurs to me now that it was the sort of moment at which we might both have started laughing. This did not happen. For some reason neither of us could appreciate the basic humor of the situation.

“He mustn’t know about us,” she said.

“Shall I hide under the bed?”

“No, don’t be silly. Oh, hell. Let me think. He won’t come in now, not while he thinks I’m sleeping, but how on earth can you get from here to the kitchen without going through the door? Evan, I can’t even think-”

We heard him stumbling around in the kitchen. He had given off calling us, evidently having decided that his sister was sleeping and that I had gone off somewhere. Julia jabbed a finger into my shoulder, then pointed at the window.

“There’s an alley leading to the street behind,” she whispered. “You could go through it and come round in front again. Say you’d gone for a walk.”

“Without any clothes on?”

“Put them on first, silly head.” I wondered why that hadn’t occurred to me. I climbed over Julia, trying to touch her as little as possible, and sat on the edge of the bed putting clothes on. I couldn’t find my undershorts. They were obviously there somewhere, but I couldn’t find them.

“We’ll get them later,” Julia assured me. “When he’s gone. There’s a matinee today and an evening performance as well. We’ll have some time together, Evan.”

I was tying a shoe. I turned to ask a wordless question, and she grinned impishly. “Time to finish what we’ve started,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll never forgive Nigel for this, but you will forgive me, won’t you, darling?”

I brushed her lips with mine, finished tying the shoe, crossed to the window. The damn thing was stuck, and I was convinced I was making a hellish amount of noise. Just as I yanked it open the doorbell sounded.

I looked at Julia. She shrugged. “It’s me,” I said. “I raced around the block in excess of the speed of light and got back before I started.”

She told me I was daft. The flat was on the first floor, which would have been a blessing if we were in the States. We weren’t, though. I crouched on the sill, tensed myself to avoid a flowerbed, and dropped ten or twelve feet to the ground. I landed on my feet, which was not surprising, and I stayed on them, which was. Then I headed down the narrow alley to the street behind.

It was still raining. I made my way around the block, solemnly cursing Nigel for not having had the common decency to sleep another half hour. Of course, I thought, the doorbell would have awakened him in any event, but by then we might have at least finished.

I plodded dutifully through the rain. All things come round to him who will wait, I comforted myself. Nigel Stokes was going to give a matinee performance that afternoon, and so would his sister and I, and this time we wouldn’t have an audience.

At the final corner, I stopped and drew a long breath. I needed some sort of story, obviously. I couldn’t very well say I’d been out to get a morning paper, or Nigel might well ask why I hadn’t brought it back with me. He might also wonder why I’d gone off without my jacket or umbrella. I thought for a moment and decided to tell him I’d spent the past few hours at an all-night café in Piccadilly. It had been clear when I left, I would say, and he could chide me for being a foolish American who didn’t know that one had to carry a brollie rain or shine, since rain was always a danger, and I could laugh along with him, and-

And I rounded the corner, and the street was cluttered with police cars, and half the policemen in London were beating a path to Nigel’s door.

I looked at allthose policemen, and I turned around and walked back around the corner. It never occurred to me to wonder why they were there. I certainly hadn’t expected them, but it was patently obvious that they had come for me, and that it was more than illegal entry that had brought them. I walked quietly round the corner and down the street and around another corner, and although it went right on raining I was no longer bothered by it. There but for the grace of coitus interruptus, thought I, go I, down the drain.

I offered a silent prayer of gratitude for Nigel’s early rising and Julia’s modesty. A brief prayer. After all, it was only decent that something went right for a change, and on balance I was still far behind. I was coatless and brollieless and wanted for murder by the most efficient police force in the free world. And I couldn’t turn myself in and try to prove my innocence because I didn’t happen to be innocent.

How much did they know? It was important to find this out before I did anything, and it was also important to get as far from London as possible before they spread the alarm. If they knew no more about me than that I had been a guest of Nigel and Julia Stokes, then I could leave the country more or less as planned. If they knew my name and had a picture of me, then the plans were useless. And new ones called for.

I took a bus to Portsmouth some seventy miles southwest of London. The trip took two hours and I spent them both with my face hidden in a morning newspaper. There was nothing in the paper about me or Mr. Hyphen. In Portsmouth I ate eggs and chips at a horrible café and went to a movie house. I saw the last half of an old Doris Day movie, a short on lobster trapping, a UPA cartoon, a slew of commercials, coming attractions for something, and the first half of the Doris Day movie. I stayed and saw the last half over a second time in the hope that they would change the ending this time through and let Rock Hudson lay her, but they didn’t and he didn’t. After my experiences with Phaedra and Julia, I was left with the feeling that the movie was true to life.