Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

He was beginning to feel yucky about this as well as guilty, but remembered that Molina had assured him that she would be “clean.”

“What do you feel like having?”

“I don’t know. You pick. Surprise me.”

She raised a pale eyebrow. “A gambler, after all,” then lifted the phone receiver and ordered very specific dinners without glancing at the menu again.

What a pro. She’d been here, done that many times before. And that was exactly what he needed. Wasn’t it?

After Vassar hung up the phone, she swaggered over to the seating area near the window and arranged herself in one of the upholstered chairs. Her legs crossed higher on the thigh than he would have thought anatomically possible, revealing that her dress’s fluttering skirt was split up the side as far as the mind of man could go.

A shame to waste such a show on a fraud. For the first time, he wondered if he could do what he had to do. He didn’t see her as a person, a woman, but as an exotic variety of show horse, all artificial arched neck and instep, all exaggerated gait and overdressed mane and tail, all unreal.

She leaned back, lifted her elbows and supported her neck with her interlaced fingers.

Matt was able to observe from this new posture that her armpits were preternaturally bare of hair. No doubt permanently removed.

None of this was a turn-on, and he knew he had such a button, because it had been triggered a time or two.

“You’re very unusual,” she said.

“The feeling is mutual.”

She laughed, the first genuine reaction he’d seen. “I’m not unusual…. What name do you go by?”

He hesitated long enough for her to continue, “John would do, but it’s a bit predictable.”

“Thomas,” he said quickly, voicing his doubt.

“Thomas. That’s better. It may not be your real name, but it’s obviously significant to you.”

“How do you know that?”

“People are never good at making up totally unrelated things about themselves. There’s always a clue. A psychological tic. Thomas. Thomas Crowne Affair, maybe. Thomassss…Wolfe? Thomasss…Mann. Thomasss — what?”

“Merton,” he said without thinking.

“Ummm. I knew it would be an author. I didn’t know it would be such a good author.”

“You know about Thomas Merton?”

“Know? I’ve read him. Along with Proust and Genet and a lot of very depressed Frenchmen and women.”

“Your name — women in your field often take geographic names.”

“So. You have experience with women in my field.”

“No! No, I don’t. I’ve just observed.”

“I went to Vassar, yes. Graduated. Observed.” She slid onto her tailbone, revealing an impossibility: yet more leg.

My God, the woman was a stork! He sipped more champagne. Obviously, he needed to be tipsy. He noticed her glass was empty and got up to refill it.

Outside the sky was the color of a Maxfield Parrish print, that heavenly, morning-glory blue that is fading fast to green and will soon flash a fringe of yellow before dousing itself in the utter dark of night.

“I’m glad to see you enjoying something,” she said, heavy emphasis on the something.

“Nature’s hard to beat.”

“And you don’t think I’m very natural.”

“I never said —”

“‘Natural’ is not an advantage in my line of work. Or in this town. I love both of them. What’s the matter with being unreal? Is reality that great a trip?”

“Reality, usually no. People, though. Authenticity is —”

“Gawd, if I hear that pretentious word again! Au-then-ti-ci-ty. Only phonies flaunt au-then-ti-ci-ty.”

“Call it honesty, then.”

“Fine. How about you give me some.”

“What kind do you want?”

“There are varieties, like…dry honesty? Sec, or triple sec? What’s your pleasure? Or maybe it’s wet honesty, like a wet dream.”

Someone knocked at the door. Fortuitously.

Matt jumped up to answer it. A waitress wheeled in a large cart draped in white linen (a young cowboy draped in white linen) on which floated silver Merimacs and Monitors of covered dishes. A huge exotic flower blossomed from a vase like a tropical fungus. There were tiny sterling salt and pepper shakers, glittering glasses, another bottle of wine.

“By the window,” Matt said, unwilling to let the sunset go and leave him alone with the electric lights. He reached into the slick eelskin wallet to peel off another hundred.

“Thank you, sir!”

Something in the tone was ironic, forcing Matt to overcome his shame of witnesses to really look at her. She was a clone of Barbara Eden as the sit-com genie, all bare midriff and glittery lavender veils and long blonde ponytail. She was petite enough to remind him of Temple, although much curvier, an observation that felt disloyal, as if this whole situation wasn’t a betrayal enough.

She rolled the hundred tight into cigarette-size and deposited it in the valley of her push-up bodice. Above the veil that covered her lower face, her eyes glittered like the dappled water in the darkened pools below, blue-green.

She winked and left, a real “working woman” who’d hit the jackpot of a big tip in a high-dollar suite. And all she had to do was flash a little flesh, push a cart, and do her job.

Now her, she was interesting. A mystery. Who did she really work for? What kid was going to get a special outing out of that hundred? What significant other would she wave it at as proof of a job well done? What small luxury would sit on her crowded bathroom shelf in what ordinary house or apartment…

“Hey, Big Spender,” said the woman lounging in the chair.

Matt remembered the rest of that line: spend a little time on me.

Matt edged the food cart between them. Vassar was forced to sit up to examine her dinner.

“Oh, this side’s yours. Mine’s the sea bass.”

“Shall we spin the table or change seats?” he asked.

“Spin the table. Do we get a kiss when it’s done?”

“Dinner first. It looks superb.”

“The dinner he compliments,” she said to the window with a shrug.

She was slightly tipsy, and he was all too sober.

“You’re…superb, too.”

“Too.” She washed away her moue with a sip of champagne and a pointed look at the distant wine cooler.

He rose and filled her glass again.

Outside the night had turned midnight blue.

Was he guilty of rejecting a hooker? Another pretext for anguished self-examination.

“No, really.” He sat opposite her, examined her beautiful face, all bones and makeup. Her eyes…what color were her eyes? He couldn’t tell.

He lifted his champagne glass. “You are beautiful, intelligent, sophisticated. The race of men must bless your existence.”

“They reward it, that’s for sure.” But she seemed mollified.

Matt decided that the condemned man deserved a hearty last meal. He concentrated on the cutting of his tender pepper steak in brandy-whatever sauce. It melted in his mouth like Lady Godiva chocolates.

Everything was superb. The best garlic mashed potatoes he had ever eaten. Even the vegetables were tasty, crisp, worth gobbling down to the last sprig or floret. The champagne bottle was empty, so he had to open the wine and switch to the squatter glasses.

He drank, she drank. The food disappeared and so did the any visible trace of the world outside.

“Most men,” she said over dessert, a tiramisù, “would envy you.”

“From what I know of most women, and that’s not a lot, they’d be wild with jealousy to see how much you can eat and still look like you do.”

“That’s one of the reasons I decided on this profession. It occurred to me I had certain advantages for it. Some are metabolic. Wealthy men usually like to eat well. I can keep up with them in that respect as well. Men are bored by women who peck at food like chickadees, whining all the while.”