The City sweated like a fat man on a treadmill. It had been sultry hell for the last three weeks, and the Citizens went home after work to their peeling-wallpaper home sweet homes, got as close to naked as their shame allowed and slouched next to their refrigerators, the electric drone of fans a waste of wattage. Nightfall made no difference; the pillow had no cool side after a while, and if you were lucky enough to sleep you dreamed of a
dry
heat.
People go a little crazy in this kind of steambath season. Husbands want wives to shut the hell up, because that's humid air coming outta her wordhole, and dammit I work hard all day, and I swear to God you just don't
listen
...
And wives−or teenage daughters−who've had enough decide to pack up and leave. Or maybe they're too stifled by the heat, brains too full of steam, to decide anything, and just pick up a pistol and make some
changes
around this place.
That's generally where I come in. Not the part with the pistols−given a choice I leave that to the cops−but the people who've had enough, the leaving, the disappearing; if my phone rings it's generally somebody wondering where. And sometimes they don't physically disappear, but they're sure as Hell partly gone even if they're there, and my client wants to know with whom. They're usually not happy to find out.
See, I'm a private investigator. Ten p.m., a Thursday, I was still in my office. It's marginally cooler than my apartment. I sat alone with a bottle and a pack of Luckys, drinking rye neat and figuring out which bills not to pay while I cleaned my revolver. Both windows were up, for all the good it did. The blinds were inert; no breeze, even a warm one, off the harbor for weeks. The neon sign outside the window behind me, loudly advising everyone to EAT, whined like a locust with each flash, and it hadn't failed to flash, all night long, in the six years I'd had this office space.
I'd called it a day, shooed my secretary Maggie home and saw no need to keep up appearances; I was stripped down to trousers, undershirt, shoulder holster, and a very worn pair of shoes.
I heard a knock at the outer office door. A client? Now? I'd finished cleaning my roscoe. I set it down on the desk, put my fedora on and opened my office door to investigate. That's what I do.
The lights were off in the outer office, but on in the corridor outside. Silhouetted through the frosted glass of the hallway door--with my name in gold letters, no less−was a very curvy shadow. Lanky. I unlatched the door and opened up.
"You're the private investigator?" A voice like bourbon and honey, in a smudged glass. An eyebrow with a skeptical arch. Big grey eyes, heavy-lidded, drowsy. Button nose, lips built to pout, diamonds on her earlobes, dressed to the nines—hell, the tens—and a body that would make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.
Classy dame. I took my cigarette out of my mouth to speak to her. "Do come in," I said, and pulled my suspenders back up into place. "Pardon my informality. It
is
after hours."
"Yes, I know. That is, I apologize for the lateness of the hour. And never mind about your appearance. The shirt is adequate. It suits you. Very Stanley Kowalski."
"Don't know him. Do I understand you require my services, Miss...?"
"Faversham." she said. "Gloria Faversham."
She was lying. One too many flutters of those thick eyelashes maybe, or a skewed dimple. I don't know, but something was a tell. Well, I didn't mind listening to lies for a while. Not from that mouth.
"Step into my office, Miss Faversham. Please." I gestured, palm up, to my door.
"Thank you," she purred, and her high heels clicked across my floor as she preceded me into the office. I took in the ankles and calves that moved those stiletto heels along and I whistled, strictly to myself. The dark seams of her silk stockings disappeared mid-calf into a tight tweed skirt with an 9-inch slit up the back, and I tried to trace the path of those long gams under the wool. Not easy; I was distracted by the hypnotic figure-8s her backside made, with a little jiggle at the end of each swing. A snug little matching jacket hugged where her hips sloped up to a narrow waist, then the flare of her ribs, all of it topped by a mink stole and a little pillbox hat. In this weather?
Then I noticed—I'm supposed to notice things—she didn't sweat. Not a drop, not a sheen, not even a glow. She was cool, all right, but was she a customer?
I said "Would you care to sit down?" as I yanked an ashtray off the client chair, but she didn't. Care to sit down. So I did, behind my desk. I lit another cigarette as she clicked about my office, first lowering the blinds, then inspecting whatever was hung on my wall. I never look at it myself. Maybe she was looking for a framed Detective's License, or pictures of the mayor shaking my mitt as we grinned at the photogs. She didn't find either one, so she gave it up and snaked the stole off from around her shoulders. She hooked it onto my hatrack and then sat. She unpinned her hat, took it off and perched it on a stack of unpaid bills.
"Oh, I beg your pardon," I said, "Would you care for a cigarette?" and I offered the crumpled pack.
"Thank you, no, I have my own," she said, and unclasped her pearl-encrusted purse to fish out a silver cigarette case. I snatched up the desk lighter, snapped it alight and held it out for her. She took my wrist in her hand and leaned over my desk, cigarette between those lips, for a light.
Her eyes were closed against the heat of the flame, and really, I had no place else to look but down the neckline of her silk blouse. She'd made a concession to the humidity and unbuttoned the top three buttons. The brazen orange flashing of the EAT sign lit up the deep divide of her full breasts, once, twice, and lit the inside surface of the underside of her brassiere. It was pink. I told you I notice things.
She took a drag on the cigarette and opened her eyes. I had shifted my gaze in time, I think, but she still looked at me like a museum exhibit. "How may I help you, Miss, uh, Faversham?"
"Is that rye?" she said, not really a question. I poured three fingers into a coffee cup and slid it across the desk.
She launched into whatever line of bunk she'd cooked up. It doesn't matter what hooey she was spouting, it won't move the plot along, but I listened. Just listened. No
I sees
, no
Uh-huhs
, no
Go ons.
I just watched her eyes.
And her lips. I thought about kissing them. I thought about taking her face in hand and kissing that mouth for a long, long time. I thought about sliding my meathooks down past her ample cleavage and around to her pert bottom and lifting her up and in. I thought about how she'd look wearing just the mink stole and a garter belt. I thought about how it was a good thing she couldn't see, through my desk, little Roscoe stiffening like a day-old corpse.
And then I noticed something, again. A bead of sweat at her temple. Maybe she wasn't used to lying, or maybe she was unnerved by my steely gaze. Neither possibility seemed likely. And after all, it wasn't getting any cooler. In fact, the humidity felt like an uninvited houseguest.
"...and that's why I sought you out," she was saying."Will you take the job?"Again, not really a question. I looked thoughtful at her. She uncrossed her legs, stood, and began inspecting the room again. She went to the far window, the one without a neon sign, parted two slats of the blind and tried to look out, but it was too dark outside. The lights in the room reflected in the wobbly glass only showed her her own eyes between the slats.
I tilted my chair back and explained my rates; gave her the usual disclaimer. While I talked she unbelted her suit-jacket, pulled a handkerchief from a pocket inside, dabbed at her temple, then at the hollow at the base of her throat. She took the jacket off and draped it over the back of her chair. She drained the last of the mug of rye and set it down on my desk, then set herself down next to it, perched on the desk's edge. I could smell her perfume. Expensive. Made me think expensive thoughts.
"That all sounds quite satisfact'ry," she said, then stubbed out her cigarette and looked at me without saying any more. Just looked at me.
The blinds rattled. A hot breeze blew through the room; stirred her hair. It all settled back into place.
I refilled her drink. I noticed her lipstick burnt onto the cup's rim as I poured, and I noticed that the hair on my arm and the back of my hand was...not standing, exactly, but...electric. My pistol sat next to the phone and smelled of cordite, but through that I could whiff ozone. She reached down for the cup. The air was still oppressive, but somehow empty, waiting, waiting for something to rush in, crowd in, like a saloon on payday at quitting time.
She brought the cup to her lips. Another hot breeze, stiffer this time, lifted the blinds and riffled through my paperwork. Her lips parted as I heard distant thunder. She sipped the drink and brought the cup away; a drop rolled down her lip and she caught it, quick, with her tongue.
All the while her eyes held mine. She brought the handkerchief up to her collar bone, dabbed at a bead of perspiration, but it escaped and ran down into her cleavage. She followed it down with the handkerchief. The fourth button of her blouse came undone. I just happened to notice.
All at once the windows turned electric white and the room lit up in stuttering flashes, the slats of the blinds casting sharp horizontal shadows: on the walls, across her face. Maybe it was a trick of the lightning, but I saw something in her eyes. I'm pretty sure it was in mine too. Her tongue ran along her blood-red lower lip again. Thunder followed the flashes, and made the windows thrum. I could hear the distant dry-leaf crackle of oncoming rain.
The next staccato lightning bursts turned the room into an old-time nickelodeon peepshow, in high-contrast black & white: my arm sweeping across the desk, the flying phone, the fluttering papers a jerky, stop-motion cartoon. Another flash, blinding, lit up my arm shooting behind her, the other hand pulling aside the front of her blouse and pawing her breast. She exhaled sharply and her mouth sought mine. I planted a sweaty kiss on her full, soft lips as she wrapped her arms around my neck. I lowered her down across the desk and planted my knee between her thighs.
Now it was like a fever-dream, our movements beyond control, panting and angry; thunder like surf, lightning like gunfire, boom and flash ever closer together as we tore at each others' clothes, animals in the heat. Her hand worked between my legs; I tugged her dress up over her waist and unhooked her garter belt, furious, to clutch at her panties. She dug her nails into the back of my head and pulled me down to her heaving cleavage. I found the skirt's zipper at her hip and pulled it down; unhooked her bra; peeled her. She lay back on the desk, knees spread, her back on the ink-blotter, her head off the desk's edge. I stood then, eyeing her naked body up and down as I undid my trousers and let them drop. She lifted her head and eyed me back. Thunder and lightning, loud and dazzling, pounded and roared again and again, hard and fast.
I grabbed her thighs and clasped them to my hips. I'd left her silk stockings on, and I liked how it felt. She arched her back and moved herself toward me. I ran my hands down her sweat-slick body, from throat to breasts and over her taut stomach down to her coiffed muff. I fingered her, slipping a calloused trigger-finger in and out of her moist sex.
I was harder than Chinese algebra. She looked at me, wolfish, under thick lashes of eyes half-closed, and breathed, "Mmm, private dick." I took a buttock in each hand, pulled her to me, poised the business end of my rod at the cleft, then rammed it home.
