Лоуренс Блок - Random Walk - A Novel for a New Age

“I’ll be there,” he said.

“I figured you might.”

He didn’t know that he’d come back for her. All the same, he paid the check in cash instead of with the credit card he’d planned on using. He left a good tip but not an outrageous one. On his way to the Lincoln he saw her white Trans-Am parked all the way at the back of the lot.

He drove around for two hours, trying to decide what to do. At ten minutes of eleven he was back at the restaurant lot, the Lincoln parked alongside the Trans-Am.

He got out of the car, leaned against the fender and waited. At five past the hour she exited the restaurant by the side door. She was still wearing her uniform and carrying her purse. Her face lit up when she saw him, and she hurried across the blacktop to him.

“I didn’t know if you’d be here,” she said. “I didn’t know for sure if I wanted you to. But the minute I saw you I was glad you came back. I don’t do this often.”

“Neither do I.”

“But the way you were looking at me, it really got to me. I mean it got me hot.”

“I didn’t mean to stare.”

“Hey, I’m not complaining.” Her eyes were very dark, black in the dim light of the parking lot. “My name’s T.J. You don’t want to know what it stands for.”

“I’m Mark.”

“Well, Mark, do you want to go for a drink? Because I don’t, particularly.”

“What do you want to do?”

For answer, she came into his arms and kissed him. The move took him a little by surprise, but he put his arms around her and felt her body against him and her mouth on his, and the kiss lasted.

“Wow,” she said.

“You’re a pretty good kisser, T.J.”

“So are you. That was research, I wanted to check the chemistry. While I was at it I seem to have broken the ice. You want to come to my place?”

“Sure.”

“This your car? I think we better take two cars. If we got in yours we’d never make it out of the lot. Have you got the leather seats? Maybe we should get in your car.”

“You like leather, T.J.?”

“I like everything,” she said. “God, you got me hot. Feel,” she commanded, and pressed his hand between her legs. He had just a moment to feel the damp warmth of her before she danced away, laughing. “Now you follow me, okay?”

Tagging along after her, he realized that he didn’t have to hurt her. She wasn’t a stranger now. They knew each other’s names, they had kissed, she was eager to be his companion for the evening. He could make love to her.

He hadn’t done that in a long time.

Her apartment was a one-bedroom unit in a garden apartment complex north of town near the river. She parked in her space and showed him where to leave the Lincoln. Inside, she showed him around, then offered to make coffee. He said he didn’t want any.

She lived in comfortable disorder. One wall was given over to bookcases made of boards and concrete blocks. The books, almost all paperbacks, filled the shelves and spilled over onto the floor. There were several unframed posters tacked to the walls, their edges curling around the tacks. Two of them advertised resorts on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. A third was a movie poster, with Jeff Bridges aiming an enormous pistol at the audience.

Her bed was a foam mattress on a plywood platform, and they were stretched out on it not ten minutes after they entered the apartment. “I’d hate for you to think I’m easy,” she said, after kissing him, “but why waste time?”

She was beautiful. Her uniform had hinted at the lushness of her figure, but with her clothes off she was better than he had expected, with beautifully shaped full breasts and a very narrow waist. He lay on the bed with her and held her in his arms and kissed her mouth, and he knew that this was going to be all right, that everything would be fine. He didn’t even want to harm her, he just wanted to give her pleasure.

“Lie still,” he told her after a moment, and he moved lower to pay some attention to her breasts. She responded nicely, she loved what he was doing to her, and he lingered awhile at her breasts, delighting in them.

Then he moved lower, stationing himself between her thighs. She was gratifyingly passionate, very vocal in her enthusiasm. He brought her to a shattering orgasm, then went on licking her until he had coaxed the last sweet tremor out of her body.

When he lay down beside her she said, “Holy shit. I think the phrase we’re looking for is ‘beyond her wildest dreams.’ Where’d you learn to do that?”

“There was this special on public television.”

“Is that right? I bet you watched it more than once. But now we’ve got to do something for you.”

“No, I’m all right.”

“Are you? Oh, my, look what you’re trying to hide from me. ‘Officer, he had a concealed weapon.’ Mark, I have a place for you to conceal it.” Her hand fastened on him. “Come on,” she said, tugging. “If you think you’re going to escape with that beauty you’re out of your mind.”

And after all, why shouldn’t he do what she wanted? He didn’t have to worry about evidence. If his pubic hair cared to merge with hers, what difference did it make? He wasn’t going to hurt her. He could leave behind all the evidence in the world.

He slipped easily, deliciously, inside her. Her arms held him, her breasts cushioned him, her hips rocked him. They found a rhythm together and held it, and he gave himself up to the sensations of her flesh on his.

He brought her twice to climax that way and got no closer to it himself. He considered pretending, but now he wanted the release of orgasm, even needed it. Carefully, deliberately, he allowed himself a fantasy.

And in the fantasy he was with the checkout girl from Ames, but the fantasy took a different turn from the moment he parked the car on the deserted country road and opened the trunk. Instead of a corpse she emerged wild-eyed and furious, brandishing the tire iron with which he’d struck her down. And he took the tire iron away from her, snapping her arm at the elbow as he did so, and she cried out in pain and shock, but they were miles from the nearest house and no one could hear her.

And he stripped her naked, and first he had to punish her for attacking him, and he punished her brutally and with imagination. He used the tire iron. He used his hands and his teeth. He was cruel, very cruel…

And he was careful now, very careful, careful to keep his own hands away from T.J.’s neck, careful to let the fantasy play only in his mind while his body made love. And it worked, he reached his dry climax, and lay spent upon her.

But she wouldn’t leave it alone.

“Mark? How come you didn’t finish?”

“I did.”

“Then why aren’t I all wet and sticky?” She got up on an elbow. “Listen,” she said, “I feel like a violin that somebody just played the living shit out of. I never had loving this good. I mean it.”

He didn’t know what to say.

“If there’s something special you like—”

“There’s nothing.”

“I don’t believe you. Look, you don’t have to be embarrassed with me. I’m as kinky as you are, I like everything. You know what I am? I’m tri-sexual. If it’s sexual, I wanna try it.”

T.J., T.J., leave it the hell alone.

“Tell me what you like,” she said, “and we’ll do it.”

“How would you feel,” he said slowly, “about being tied up?”

She found a ball of binder’s twine and he tied her spreadeagled on her back on the bed, a pillow underneath her bottom. There were storage drawers in the platform the mattress rested on, and he anchored the twine to the drawer handles. When he was satisfied with her bondage he told her to try to move.