“Oh … anything.”
“No, no! You’re supposed to say, ‘Why, the original-cast album from Hi There.’ Or anything else I starred in.” She shook her head reprovingly, and the points of her coronet caught golden reflections from the lights. “But since you’re obviously a man of low taste I’ll have to do the whole bit myself.” She touched switches at a remote-control set by her end of the couch, and in a moment dreamy strings began to come from tri-aural speakers hidden around the room. It was not Hi There. “That’s better,” she said drowsily, and in a moment, “Wasn’t it nice in the plane?”
“It was fine,” Chandler said. Gently—but firmly—he sat up and reached automatically into his pocket.
The girl sighed and straightened. “Cigarette? They’re on the table beside you. Hope you like the brand. They only keep one big factory going, not to count those terrible Russian things that’re all air and no smoke.” She touched his forehead with cool fingers. “You never told me about that, love.”
It was like an electric shock—the touch of her fingers and the touch of reality at once. Chandler said stiffly, “My brand. But I thought you were there at the trial.”
“Oh, only now and then. I missed all the naughty parts—though, to tell the truth, that’s why I was hanging around. I do like to hear a little naughtiness now and then … but all I heard was that stupid lawyer and that stupid judge. Made me mad.” She giggled. “Lucky for you. I was so irritated I decided to spoil their fun too.”
Chandler sat up and took a long pull at his drink. Curiously, it seemed to sober him. He said: “It’s nothing. I happened to rape and kill a young girl. Happens every day. Of course, it was one of your friends that was doing it for me, but I didn’t miss any of what was going on, I can give you a blow-by-blow description if you like. The people in the town where I lived, at that time, thought I was doing it on my own, though, and they didn’t approve. Hoaxing—you know? They thought I was so perverse and cruel that I would do that sort of thing under my own power, instead of with some exec—or, as they would have put it, being ignorant, some imp, or devil, or demon—pulling the strings.”
He was shaking. He waited for what she had to say; but she only whispered, “I’m sorry, love,” and looked so contrite and honest that, as rapidly as it had come upon him, his anger passed.
He opened his mouth to say something to her. He didn’t get it said. She was sitting there, looking at him, alone and soft and inviting. He kissed her; and as she returned the kiss, he kissed her again, and again.
But less than an hour later he was in her Porsche, cold sober, raging, frustrated, miserable. He slammed it through the unfamiliar gears as he sped back to the city.
She had left him. They had kissed with increasing passion, his hands playing about her, her body surging toward him, and then, just then, she whispered, “No, love.” He held her tighter and without another word she opened her eyes and looked at him.
He knew what mind it was that caught him then. It was her mind. Stiffly, like wood, he released her, stood up, walked to the door and locked it behind him.
The lights in the villa went out. He stood there, boiling, looking into the shadows through the great, wide, empty window. He could see her lying there on the couch, and as he watched he saw her body toss and stir; and as surely as he had ever known anything before he knew that somewhere in the world some woman—or some man!—lay locked with a lover, violent in love, and was unable to tell the other that a third party had invaded their bed.
Chandler did not know it until he saw something glistening on his wrist, but he was weeping on the wild ride back to Honolulu in the car. Her car. Would there be trouble for his taking it? God, let there be trouble! He was in a mood for trouble. He was sick and wild with revulsion.
Worse than her use of him, a casual stimulant, an aphrodisiac touch, was that she thought what she did was right. Chandler thought of the worshipping dozens under the sundeck of the exec restaurant, and Rosalie’s gracious benediction as they made her their floral offerings. Blind, pathetic fools!
Not only the deluded men and women in the garden were worshippers trapped in a vile religion, he thought. It was worse. The gods and goddesses worshipped at their own divinity as well!
X
Three days later Koitska’s voice, coming from Chandler’s lips, summoned him out to the T.W.A. shack again.
Wise now in the ways of this world, Chandler commandeered a police car and was hurried out to the South Gate, where the guards allowed him a car of his own. The door of the building was unlocked and Chandler went right up.
He was astonished. The fat man was actually sitting up. He was fully dressed—more or less; incongruously he wore flowered shorts and a bright red, short-sleeve shirt, with rope sandals. He said, “You fly a gilikopter? No? No difference. Help me.” An arm like a mountain went over Chandler’s shoulders. The man must have weighed three hundred pounds. Slowly, wheezing, he limped toward the back of the room and touched a button.
A door opened.
Chandler had not known before that there was an elevator in the building. That was one of the things the exec did not consider important for his slaves to know. It lowered them with great grace and delicacy
