Death Is a Lonely Business (Crumley Mysteries 1)

“One,” she guessed, and crowed when my head bobbed. “Where i

s she tonight?”

“Mexico City.”

“When’s she coming back?”

“Ten days.”

“Miss her? Love her?”

“Yes.”

“You want to telephone her and stay on the phone all night so her voice protects you from this dragon lady?”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

“Like hell you’re not. You believe in body warmth?”

“Body?”

“Warmth! Sex without sex. You can give this old gila monster canned heat without losing virtue. Just hold and hug, spoon fashion. Keep your eyes on the ceiling. That’s where the action is. Films all night until the dawn comes up like Francis X. Bushman’s erection. Sorry. Damn. Come on, son. Let’s hit the sack!”

She sank into the pillows, pulling me after, at the same time stabbing some buttons on a control console imbedded in the floor. The last lights went out. The sixteen-millimeter projector started humming. The ceiling filled with light and shadow.

“Look. How d’you like that?”

She pointed up with her beautiful nose.

Constance Rattigan, twenty-eight years back in time, on the ceiling, lit a cigarette.

Down beside me, the real lady blew smoke.

“Wasn’t I a bitch!” she said.

I woke at dawn not believing where I was. I woke incredibly happy, as if something beautiful had happened in the night. Nothing had, of course, it was just sleeping among so many rich pillows by a woman who smelled like spice cabinets and fine parquetry. She was a lovely chess game carved and set in a store window when you were a kid. She was a freshly built girl’s gym, with only the faintest scent of the noon tennis dust that clings to golden thighs.

I turned in the dawn light.

And she was gone.

I heard a wave come along the shore. A cool wind blew in through the open French doors. I sat up. Far out in the dusky waters I saw an arm flash up and down, up and down. Her voice called.

I ran out and dove in and swam halfway to her before I was exhausted. No athlete this. I turned back and sat waiting for her on the shore. She came in at last and stood over me, stark naked this time.

“Christ,” she said, “you didn’t even take off your underwear. What’s happened to modern youth?”

I was staring at her body.

“How you like it? Pretty good for an old empress, huh? Good buzz-um, tight rump, marceled pubic hairs—”

But I had shut my eyes. She giggled. Then she was gone, laughing. She ran up the beach half a mile and came back, having startled only the gulls.

Next thing I knew the smell of coffee blew along the shore, with the scent of fresh toast. When I dragged myself inside she was seated in the kitchen, wearing only the mascara she had painted around her eyes a moment before. Blinking rapidly at me, like some silent screen farm girl, she handed me jam and toast, and draped a napkin daintily over her lap, so as not to offend while I stared and ate. She got strawberry jam on the tip of her left breast. I saw this. She saw me seeing this and said, “Hungry?”

Which made me butter my toast all the faster.

“Good grief, go call Mexico City.”