Frenzy

Mr. Haubrich had helped her ignore the striking reflection in the mirror. She told Jack he still helped her. Anytime she thought she was pretty neat stuff all she had to do was remember the day she'd come home and made dinner and waited for him to come home as usual and the burning humiliation of the phone call from his MOTHER. HIS MOTHER, for God's sake. He didn't even have the style to tell her himself. Even a note taped to the pillow.

Anything but his goofy mother calling to explain that Winslow wouldn't be home that night . . . Oh my God, the embarrassment! She still couldn't take the thought of that phone call and everything it represented to her.

Finally the shock wore off a little and Rita realized that crazy Win and his secretary could go right up in smoke for all she cared and that getting on with her life was the immediate priority item. As more time passed she began to look on it as the blessing that it was. Her husband had been a weak, self-centered kissass heading up the corporate trust ladder with Daddy's contacts and a doting Mommy who still kept him tied to her by the apron umbilical.

Eichord's impression of Rita was that she looked like a sticker who didn't run from problems. She would have been willing to keep trying.

She said, 'My marriage vows were serious stuff to me. It really was what I'd committed myself to forever.'

'Once I said the same thing, but I let a demon get hold of me.'

'For me his leaving was a positive thing in the end. I may have taken a pretty good shot to the old self- esteem but it let a lot of fresh air back into my life.'

'My ex-wife probably could say the very same thing. I wasn't marriage material for anybody. I doubt if I would be for anybody. It takes a lot to keep a marriage going in my line of work. You give so much of your time to it. It isn't fair, truly, to subject a spouse to that kind of second place in a partnership.'

'Maybe not. Maybe so. But there are cops with great marriages, no?'

'Some. Sure. But I think as many cop marriages go sour. You've got a lot of strikes against you right off the bat.' He suddenly switched metaphor because suddenly every sentence that went through his mind had the word 'balls' in it.

They dimmed the lights and talked more and soon they kissed and it was so soft and tender a beginning that he nearly laughed out loud at the marvel and sheer pleasure of it and rightness and oh, baby, yes, the niceness of it. The unexpected reunion had created a hothouse atmosphere for both of them.

She wore a white, long-sleeved blouse and no jewelry. She had a beautiful body. Breasts that were almost too good to be real. The kind of classic, luscious melons that look so soft and white but spring firm to the touch, perfectly proportioned, neither small nor overly large. A tight, flat belly and smallish rib cage that suddenly curved out in a pair of gorgeous globes.

She turned and lowered the lights completely, turning on a single light behind her, the rest of the apartment in darkness. Her legs. My God. She was showgirl, pony, absolute yippee all the way. What a pair of lovely legs she had.

He had the odd and awesome sensation of having something deliciously sweet in his mouth, and he breathed deeply of her body's uniquely feminine fragrance. She still had on her glasses and as she turned on those legs that he couldn't quit staring at she pulled her glasses off and it was like a striptease. Just that alone was. And that long, giraffe neck and the model's chin, the long neck and throat curving out like a Modigliani, and the throat and beautiful upper chest minutely freckled in kissable texture he would have to investigate closely, and those killer legs in the little scanty panties and up very close he could see almost invisible veins in her long, alabaster legs that just kept going and going.

Against the light her hot and lovely body was silhouetted in the sheerness of the silky, wispy thing that covered her breasts, falling away in an inverted V in front and the perfection of her dazzled him with desire and inflamed him.

The long flame of hair curved and caressed her as it dropped long and straight then following the lovely lines of her throat down through the soft shadows.

Her eyes blazed at him wanting him back and he imagined tasting that full, hot mouth soon burning himself on their lust. He watched her and she watched him and they took their time tasting the anticipation of it. He let his eyes travel up and down that gorgeous body standing there profiled for him. High, firm breasts pushing through the wispiness, nipples thrusting and pointing at him, erect and ready to explode with the heat of a touch, a flat and beautiful stomach — a teenager's tummy, so smooth and supple — and then the classic curves as the body flared out into a woman's sexy hips and the shadowy triangle of her little, soft bush in the tiny diaphanous bikini panties, and the long, long loooonnnnnngggg perfection of legs, down to high heels. A sultry picture of pure sex.

She stood there unmoving. Absolutely rigid. Lancing him with her heat and beauty. Telling him that this — all of this — was his to take and use, and his brain overdosed on the fire that had spread through his body and he pulled her down.

Neither of them quite believed it. It was over so quickly for both of them and exploding out of them together in the thing that started as tenderness but crushing, demanding, consuming came together in a molten release that was so fast they just lay there together, Eichord still in her, she still clinging to him, both of them wet, soaked, sledgehammered, steamrollered, hung out to dry. And she said softly to him, 'I want romance and I want it now,' and he understood.

Later he sat on the edge of the bed beside her, with all the lights on, both of them nude, and he stared at all of her an inch or so at a time, just drinking her in and so obviously stoned on it she laughed and asked him, 'Hey, buddy. Watcha starin' at?'

'Modigliani,' he said, enraptured by the long curving throat and flawless upper chest.

'Never mind that Bo Diddley stuff,' she said. 'Let's screw.' And he fell off the bed and laughed until he cried. And when he'd calmed down she got down on the floor with him and they did it on her bedroom rug. A first, she told him. And they agreed that America was a phenomenal place.

Eichord had been still for a long time. Listening to her deep breathing, and it startled him when she asked him, 'You asleep?' in a quiet voice.

'No,' he said softly.

'What were you thinking about?'

'Nothin',' he lied. Shaking his head and turning the corners of his mouth down. 'Absolutely zero.' Vowing that he would see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

The old man sat quietly eating his dinner. It was not the standard prison fare. There was fresh fruit. Excellent fish. He tasted nothing. The frustration of it all was enough to make you go mad. He had to summon up all his willpower, which was considerable, to keep his patience. He was too old for all of this. What garbage the thing of theirs had become. He shook his head slightly and took another small bite of fruit.

He fumbled with his reading bifocals trying to get them out of the case which he dropped and ignored, not even watching as the large, frightening-looking man who stood behind him quickly and silently retrieved the case and placed it beside him, returning to his position to the old man's rear.

What had these boys become? Fucking Paulie and Jimmie. His goddamn brothers in the thing. Fighting each other and killing and breaking the oath right and left. You didn't kill someone where he lived. Not even if there was a contract. It just wasn't done. If you caught him with your daughter, maybe then you clip him near his home, but never like this. He tried to read about it in the summary.

He could do nothing. It hurt him to piss, it hurt him to shit, it hurt him not to shit. His old fingers were painfully arthritic and the first words he read set him off again. Jimmie the Hook. Crazy Lyle. Fucking maniacs shot at Toot Smith down in the middle of Laclede fucking Landing with people all over the fucking place. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, blessed Virgin, Holy Mother of God, what an I gonna do?

The Commission couldn't give less of a shit about the family's problems out in St. Louis. He was expected to run this thing from JAIL?

He took a series of shallow breaths, his little bird chest wheezing, huffing, and puffing, ancient, abused lungs sucking air as best they could. Fucking prison air on top of everything else. Just more than a human being could stand. And the brotherhood expects me to pull this shit back together for them. He raised the first finger of his right hand a couple of inches from the table and felt the presence behind him moving and a looming shadow draw near at his command.