Лоуренс Блок - One Night Stands and Lost Weekends

She started to undress. I stared at her greedily. There was no one else around, and my eyes studied every detail of her body. She undressed slowly, tantalizingly, slithering out of her dress and hanging it up in the closet. Finally she stood there nude, and it was worth all the waiting, worth all the walking that I had done that night. She was like a vision, the most perfect woman I had ever seen.

I thought I would have to go home then. I expected she would turn off the light and go to bed, and if she had I would have been satisfied. It was enough for one night. Instead she walked to her mirror and began to examine herself.

It was the perfect view for me. I could see both her back and the mirror image of her front. She looked at herself, and I watched her. Then she began to dance.

It was not exactly a dance. She moved like a burlesque dancer, but there was nothing crude about it. She knew how beautiful she was, and she moved in rhythm, making a symphony of her body and watching herself as she did. It was something to watch.

Finally she stopped dancing. She slipped on a housecoat and stepped through a door. I guessed she was going to the bathroom, which meant it was the end of the show. I could have left then, but didn’t. I wanted to get another glimpse of her. She had to come back.

I stood silently at the window, waiting for her.

Suddenly a door opened. I whirled around to find her standing there, in the doorway, pointing a gun at me. “Don’t move,” she said. “Don’t move or I’ll shoot.”

I froze in terror, staring down the mouth of the gun, which looked like a cannon to me. “I wasn’t doing anything,” I stammered. “Just watching you. I didn’t hurt you.”

She didn’t say a word.

“Look,” I pleaded, “just let me go. I won’t bother you anymore. I promise I’ll stay away from here.”

She ignored me. “I saw you in the mirror,” she said. “Saw you watching me. I danced for you. Did you like the way I danced?”

I nodded dumbly, unable to speak.

“It was for you,” she said. “I liked your eyes on me. I liked the way you looked at me.”

She smiled. “Come inside.”

I hesitated. Was this a trap? Had she called the police?

“Come here,” she said. “Come inside. Don’t be afraid.”

I followed her into the house, into the bedroom. “I want you,” she said. “I want you.” She slipped out of the housecoat and tossed it over a chair.

“Come on,” she said. “I know you want me. I could tell from the way you looked at me. Come here.”

She set the gun on the dresser and motioned for me to step closer. “I want you to make love to me,” she said.

I walked over to her, and she threw her arms around me. “Take me,” she moaned.

I pushed her away. “No,” I said. “I don’t want that. I just wanted to watch you. I wouldn’t do that .”

She pressed against me again. “I want you,” she insisted. She opened her arms and I felt her hot breath on my face.

There was only one way to stop her. I picked up the gun from the dresser. “Don’t come any closer,” I warned. “Leave me alone.”

“Don’t be silly.” She smiled. “You want me and I want you.” She kept coming closer as I retreated.

That’s when it happened — when the gun went off. The noise resounded in the small bedroom, and she crumpled and fell. “Why?” she moaned. Then she died.

The police beat me. They beat me harder than last time, and they called me a pervert. They think I tried to rape her, but that’s not true. I wouldn’t do a thing like that.

It was the afternoon, and the sun was beginning to dip to the level of the horizon. Frank pressed down heavily on the accelerator, gunning the car smoothly along the highway. Just a few more miles, he thought. Just a few more miles and he’d be home, if you could call an empty room in a run-down hotel home. Just a few more miles and he could take a hot bath and drink himself to sleep.

Then he saw the girl. At first glance he took her for just another hitchhiker, and speeded up to pass her by. Then his eyes took in the long hair and the swell of the breasts, and his foot found the brake pedal and slowed the car to a stop. He reached across the front seat and opened the door.

“Hop in,” he said.

She climbed into the car and sat down beside him. He took a good look then, and he liked what he saw.

She was wearing a pair of faded blue dungarees and a man’s shirt, open at the throat, but even the shapeless clothing couldn’t conceal the shapeliness of her figure. Her breasts were large and full, and they pressed against the flannel fabric of the shirt. Her hair was long and jet black; her face very attractive, with high cheekbones and large brown eyes. As he looked at her, Frank felt the blood surging through his veins. He’d been a long time without a woman.

“Going to Milford?” she asked, naming a town a few miles the other side of Frank’s destination.

“Sure,” he said. She leaned back in the seat and closed the door, setting her small black purse on her lap.

He put the car in gear and eased back onto the highway again, watching her out of the corner of his eye. Pretty, he thought. Almost beautiful. And so very young, too — she couldn’t be over nineteen.

“Been waiting long?” he asked.

“Not too long. About fifteen minutes or so.”

“Funny how some guys won’t stop for a person, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said. “They read about people getting robbed and all, and they just drive on by.”

He stole another glance at her. It took a lot for a girl to look like that in men’s clothes. He pictured her in a dress, in a bathing suit, and finally in nothing at all. He turned his eyes back to the road as the perspiration began to form on his forehead.

If only he could have a girl like that! Then he wouldn’t mind those damned trips all over the country, not if he had something like that back at his room, waiting for him to come home. But he couldn’t have luck like that, not him. He never had.

He was forty-one, and his hair was starting to go. Slowly but surely, his life was slipping by, without anything real or important ever happening to him. The only love he ever had he bought for three dollars in a little room over Randy’s Bar. And he knew that he would go on like that, coming home every night to an empty room and passing three dollars to a prostitute every Saturday. And someday he would die without ever doing anything.

“Mind if I smoke?” Her voice broke into his reverie and stopped his train of thought.

“Go right ahead,” he said. He took a lighter from his pants pocket and turned toward her, offering her the flame.

She leaned forward to take the light. The shirt fell away from the front of her body, and Frank got a quick glimpse of smooth white skin and rounded flesh.

Again the desire surged through him. He replaced the lighter in his pocket and gripped the wheel as tight as he could in his large hands. He was breathing fast, almost panting.

“Thanks,” she said, softly.

The sun dipped lower, and he passed a sign which indicated that his town was only two miles further on down the road. Just two more miles, then three or four to Milford, and she would be gone from his life. She would leave, and he would be left with her memory and nothing more.

He looked at her again. She seemed so soft, so warm and peaceful. She yawned and stretched her lush body before him. And then he decided that he was going to have her.

The decision came in a flash. He couldn’t let his whole life disappear without doing something about it. He would take her, swiftly and violently; and the freshness of her would let him live again like a full man.