cigarillo. It was growing dim outside so he took a moment to light the lamp and trim the wick to a medium glow. Longarm sat there, anxious as a bridegroom, eagerly awaiting whatever kind of woman they were going to send him. He wondered if it was going to be the fat serving wench that had brought his supper. Hell, he would even take her. He was trying to think back just how long it had been. He had come back in from that two-week chase in New Mexico and then had been shipped out immediately to Mexico City. That had taken another ten days. Then he had been in this room for five or six days. Hell, he thought. He might as well have been a monk the way things were looking. It had been nearly a month since he’d dipped his wick.
His head suddenly swiveled around to his left as he heard the sound of a key in the lock. The door opened slowly and, in the dim light, revealed only the form of a woman. The door closed and she came walking softly toward him on her bare feet. As she came into the circle of the lamplight, Longarm started. It was Sarah.
Chapter 5
For a second, he could only stare at her, confused. Finally he said, “what are you doing here?”
She shrugged. She said, “you asked for a woman. I’m a woman, sort of.”
Longarm looked at her closely. Her hair was done and there was faint makeup on her face. She was wearing a thin wraparound robe. He said, “my Lord, Sarah. I never thought they would send you. I was thinking they’d send one of the Mexican girls around here.”
She asked, “Aren’t I good enough?” Her voice was low, dull.
Longarm said, confused and befuddled, “It’s … it’s not that. You just took me so by surprise. I don’t think of you that way. You’re … well, I don’t know how to explain it. You seem more like a lady to me.”
Sarah smiled faintly. She said, “One who goes around in an old blanket made into a robe? One who carries out your dirty dishes and your slop bucket? That seems like a lady to you?”
He was still trying to get his feet under him. He had stood up the moment she had come into the room. Now he clutched the sheet tighter around himself and said, “No, no, no. It’s not that. It’s just … I don’t know how to say it, Sarah. You seem so dispirited, as if you had given up on everything. I could no more grab you and stab you than … well … I could see myself courting you, if you can understand that.”
She said, “Well, I’m all you get. When Richard set off, he left orders that if you asked for a woman, it was to be me. So you either use me or do without. That’s all I can say.”
Longarm said, “Richard? Who’s Richard?”
She smiled her faint smile. She said, “The one you call Mr. Brown. The boss. The big honcho. The one whose word is law. The maniac.”
Longarm looked at her closely. He had noticed the bitterness that had crept into her voice as she talked about the man. He said, “You sound as if you know him mighty well.”
“I do.”
“Then why don’t you tell me about him?”
She shook her head violently. She said, “No, thank you. This isn’t much of a life, but at least it’s better than being dead.” She lifted her head and looked at Longarm. “What should we do? You’ll give me great embarrassment if you send me away now.”
Longarm sat back down on the bed. He said miserably, “Hell, I don’t know what to do. What can I say?”
She said, almost smiling, “For one thing, you can tell me why you are wearing a sheet like a Roman senator.”
Longarm said, “Well, I ain’t never seen a Roman senator, but I’m wearing the sheet because I’ve just had a bath and my clothes aren’t all that clean. I didn’t figure to put them back on once I was slicked up for the lady that was coming to see me.”
“I’ve never seen one either, only in drawings, But they wear something called a toga, which is the way you’re wearing that sheet.”
Longarm laughed slightly. As he did he realized that it was perhaps the first time he’d laughed in several days. He said, “Well, I guess it’s fitting then, if I recall what little I learned in my schooling about those Romans. They were always shutting one another up or else stabbing them with knives.”
She said, “We can’t go on talking about Roman senators. Can’t you change your mind about me?”
Longarm said, “I don’t know. You just took me so by surprise.”
“Maybe this will help,” she said. She took two steps closer to him and then untied the light robe and let it slip from her shoulders.
Longarm drew a soft, deep breath in spite of himself. The lamp light flickered off her pink and white body. She had exactly the kind of figure he liked. She was small-boned and much smaller naked than she had appeared in the bulky outfits she had been wearing. She had large breasts with big brownish-red nipples. The pubic hair that began at the vee of her legs was a curly light brown. He looked her over carefully from her straight legs to the little mound of her stomach up to her breasts and then up to her slim neck to her generous mouth and her wide, blue-gray eyes. Her hair was loose, framing her face, falling just below her shoulders.
He said huskily, feeling himself stir inside, “Why don’t we get up here on this bed and lie by each other and see what happens.”
Without a Word she crawled up on the foot of the bed and then made her way to the headboard, then turned over and lay on her back. Her eyes were fastened on the ceiling.
Longarm shrugged his way out of the sheet and then climbed up on the bed. He lay on his left side, looking down at her, his eyes still full of admiration. He said, with that husky tone he always got in his voice, “I don’t know if anybody’s ever told you, but you are one damned good-looking woman.”
She said in almost a monotone, “I’ve heard it before but it’s been so long, I’ve forgotten.”
Longarm said, “You’re not helping anything by laying there like a sacrificial lamb.” He tried to make it funny but it didn’t come out that way.
