so luscious. But she takes pills that she mixes with wine. She asked several times if I wanted some . . . but I don’t use that shit. I’ve tried smoking grass a few times, of course. But this was big-time stuff. Finally, I didn’t dare drink anything! In case she put some fucking shit in my wine.”
“You didn’t know that she uses narcotics?”
He shook his head vigorously. Suddenly he exclaimed, “I hardly know her! It was like a God damned sex fantasy! She was naked underneath! And I . . . it was impossible to resist her.”
Heavily he rested his head in his hands. Since he didn’t seem to want to go on, Irene decided to try to get him to relax and keep talking. In a mischievous tone of voice she said, “But Robbie, aren’t you old enough to know that all women are naked under their clothes?”
He laughed and gave her a desperate look. “But not right under their coats!”
Irene motioned to Tommy. This looked like it was going to be man-to-man talk. He understood and turned with an expression of the greatest sympathy toward the young man. Tactfully he asked, “Robert, are you talking about the Tuesday evening last week, when Charlotte came to pick up her new car?”
“Yes.”
“When did you and Charlotte first meet?”
“Three or four weeks before. There’s a little waiting time for cars with special paint jobs.”
“Does Charlotte’s car have special paint?”
“Yes. Light yellow. A pale lemon yellow. A luscious color.”
“What happened when you were supposed to deliver the car to her?”
“I called all day Friday and Saturday, because we got word that it wouldn’t arrive until after the weekend, on Monday morning. She finally answered just before we closed. So then we agreed that she would come over on Monday afternoon. But she never showed up. On Tuesday I called her house in the morning, but she wasn’t in. Then she called at three in the afternoon and said that she could come down in an hour to pick up the car. She said that she specifically wanted me to help her, nobody else. And I . . . was happy to oblige.”
He stopped and looked down at his fingers picking at the label. He had scraped almost the whole thing off the bottle. Tommy leaned forward and said, “When did she arrive?”
“Right after four. She had one of those cloth raincoats on, with a belt drawn tight around her waist and high-heeled shoes. When we went over to her old car, which she was trading in, her coat slipped open and she was wearing some of those nylon stockings that stay up by themselves. And nothing else. When she leaned over the seat . . . then I saw . . . Naked. She was naked. Except for the stockings.”
He stopped and his cheeks were red. He stole a glance at Irene. She responded with feigned indifference. But inside she was seething with emotion! This was a premeditated seduction.
Tommy ignored her presence and continued as though there were just two men in the room. “She made you hot?”
“What do you think? I’m a guy, after all!”
“So the two of you decided to screw?”
Robert was bright red in the face, but his expression became almost satyrlike when he replied. “You bet! We got into her new car and drove around to the back of the building where an old Ford Transit is parked; we have to fix it up a little before spring. They sell like hotcakes. People buy them as vacation cars. We hopped in the Transit. She brought a blanket and a bag from her old car. So we lay down on the blanket.”
“You were hot, I know that. So it didn’t take long before you were finished?”
To Irene’s satisfaction, some of Robert’s satyr smile was wiped away. “Well, yeah. But we couldn’t take too long because they’d start to miss me in the showroom, you know. But then she said that we’d meet again soon. If I wanted to.”
“And you did, I suppose.”
“Did I ever! It’s what every guy dreams about happening sometime in his life!”
“When did you hear from her again?”
“On Wednesday night. The next day. She said that we’d have to wait a while to meet. Her father-in-law had been murdered, you know. She also said that the police would probably want to get in touch with me. And that she had told them the truth. That she picked up the car. But not the rest. We