So she hadn’t checked out; and she had, after all, said she was “sometimes in the bar” here at the Holiday Inn. And now my fantasies were poised to come true, Penthouse Forum here I come, only I was supposed to meet someone else, wasn’t I?
Truth was, I wished I was meeting this blue-eyed redhead. She looked fucking great. Her tower of titian curls on top of that attractive roundish face, softened by the lounge lighting, her shapely body nicely served by a fuzzy yellow sweater, orange toreador pants and off-white heels. She had a yellow clutch purse in one hand and was gesturing to herself with the other, her nails the same orange as her tight slacks.
I smiled and did a kind of half rise from my seat in the booth. “Dorrie, isn’t it? Gee, you look great.”
Yes, I said “gee.” But give me credit: I left off “whillikers.”
Big white teeth formed a terrific smile. “You look good out of trunks…Actually, that sounded wrong, didn’t it?”
I grinned. “Sounded just fine. Boy, do I wish I could ask you to join me, but I’m meeting somebody here.”
“Actually, so am I. Trouble is, I didn’t get a description.”
My brain was making connections that yours probably already has. I said, “Dorrie…that isn’t short for Dorothy, is it?”
Long lashes flashed over the blue eyes, which were almond shaped. “Well, yes…”
“You’re Dorothy Byron?”
Now those blue eyes narrowed. “Yes. But you’re not Charles Koenig, are you? You don’t sound anything like him.”
So she had dealt him over the phone.
I gestured for her to sit, and she slid in across from me. “I work for Mr. Koenig. He got called away on another case, out of state.”
Way out of state.
She was smiling again. “Then you’re handling this job?”
“That’s right.”
She shook her head, the red locks bouncing nicely, and said, “I feel so foolish. Here we were yesterday, sitting and talking and even…flirting, and…now I hardly know what to say.”
“Say ‘small world,’ and let’s take it from there.”
The lounge was about half full now. Seemed to be young working people, in their later twenties and early thirties, on the prowl.
“This can be a real meat market,” she said, casting her eyes around and frowning. “Could get fairly crowded. Is there somewhere else we could talk?”
“My room’s a kind of mini-suite. There’s a sitting area with a couch. We could send for some room service, if you haven’t eaten.”
“I’m not hungry, but I wouldn’t mind the privacy. Maybe you could buy us a couple of beers, at the bar?”
I bought four cans of Pabst and then escorted Mrs. Byron out of the lounge and over to the elevators. She was a head-turner in that yellow sweater; she wore an old-fashioned brassiere, unusual in these bra-burning times, but I kind of dug its twin rocket style. Made me think of Mamie Van Doren and my first orgasm; probably was more memorable for me than Mamie, since Mamie wasn’t there.
Now, I admit I did something stupid. I believe I was a little thrown by running into my whirlpool fantasy and having her turn out to be my target’s missus. Right before I’d gone down to the lounge, I tossed my nine millimeter on the bed, and it was sitting there on the made bed against a pillow like the worst mint any maid ever left.
I’d spaced out about the damn thing, and still hadn’t remembered the gun when I opened the door and she went on in ahead of me. But she saw it right away.
She turned and smiled, her eyes alive. “So private eyes do carry guns? Just like on TV!”
“We need protection,” I said lamely. “But the management frowns on it when you carry one into a cocktail lounge.”
I put the four beers on the coffee table by the couch, switched on the lamp (the overhead light was off, the bedroom nightstand lamp also on), and sat down. She deposited herself next to me, perhaps a little closer than most good-looking clients sit to their PI. Except on TV. She smelled very good. Perfume, but not too much. She was doing fine, Penthouse Forum — wise.
“So fill me in about the creep I’m married to,” she said.
“There’ve been several girls go around to see him,” I said, “but I think some are legitimately students. Couple guys have stopped by the cottage, too. He is an advisor, after all.”
The upper lip of her full mouth curled upward. “He’s been ‘advising’ for a very long time. I was one of his first. I was going to be a hell of a writer, myself, you know. The next Sylvia Plath.”
I didn’t know who that was, either, but I said, “I won’t lie to you. I don’t want to give you false hope-he is cheating.”
She sat there with her fists clenched and her chin quivering and she stared at the wall across the way, which wasn’t worth staring at really, having a nondescript winterscape framed there (screwed into the wall, to keep me from sticking it in my suitcase). Her eyes were hard but they were also wet, glistening with emotion, hate, love, the works.
I asked, “You didn’t have any doubt, did you?”
She shook her head, red curls bouncing. “No. No. This is typical.”
“Isn’t this just about getting the goods on the guy? So you can finally pull the plug on this marriage and come out smelling like a rose on the financial end?”
She nodded.
I got up and went over to the cans of beer. I pulled the ring top on a Pabst and handed her the can and she sipped at it delicately. I pulled a ring top on another and returned to my place on the couch. I took a drink and set it on the floor. Wasn’t that thirsty, but she was greedily consuming hers now, gone from sipping to gulping.
I said, “You don’t have any kids, do you?”
“No. Didn’t I tell you that? No.”
She put the beer back on the end table, then got up and went over to the bed. She took the gun from the pillow and she turned around and the nine millimeter was huge in her orange-nailed hand. Her expression was a little crazy. But crazy enough.
She said, “You know I could just kill the son of a bitch.”
“Not a good idea. Give me that.”
“Or maybe you could. Would you kill him for me?” She seemed a little drunk. Maybe that hadn’t been her first beer.
“No. That’s not a toy.”
She handed it to me, with a babyish pout that, oddly, was the first thing that had made her look her age. I took the weapon and held it in both hands; I’d never felt the metal so cold.
She plopped down next to me again. “One of us should kill that miserable prick.”
“Yeah, well, not tonight.”
Then she started crying, and I slipped an arm around her and she sobbed into my chest. Now and then she would say, “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me?”
So I told her there was nothing wrong with her.
This went on a while.
Then she got up, suddenly, and ran to the bath-room, taking her little purse along. I thought maybe she was going to throw up, and I did hear the toilet flush, but when she came back, she’d redone her makeup, the mascara having run all to hell.
And she looked good again. Very good. Damn good. And weirdly together, her face devoid of emotion, devoid of anything but those attractive features, the kind of blank prettiness you see in advertising.
She positioned herself in front of me.
“How old are you?” she asked.
I told her.
“I was in junior high when you were born,” she said.
“I find that hard to believe.”
