Naked Came the Stranger - By Penelope Ashe Page 0,4

dying love is what we share…

In the darkened room, now thirstier than ever, Gillian was suddenly aware of the presence beside her of Mario Vella. He had allowed his left elbow to brush gently against her. In any other surroundings, in any other circumstances, Gillian Blake would have gracefully withdrawn. She didn't. She held her ground and his elbow became more persistent.

"You like?" he said.

"Very much," she said in return. "That's quite a thing, having Johnny Alonga come to your house to sing."

"I own him," he said.

"You own him?"

"Forty per cent," Mario said. "That's how much I own. And you want to know what I think about that song?"

"What's that?"

"It makes me sick to my stomach," he said. "It makes me want to puke."

"Oh?" she said, silently agreeing.

There might be something there, she thought. There was an appealing unreal quality to Mario Vella; he was a fabrication, the creation of someone or something else. Beneath the razor cut and the tailored clothes and the scent of expensive cologne there was something threatening to break out of the mold. It was, carried to the extreme, as though someone had put Brooks Brothers clothes on a gorilla.

Then the song ended and Mario disengaged his elbow and walked back up to the piano.

Before Johnny Alonga could launch his next number –

"Be My Love," no less – Gillian slipped into the adjoining room, the den, the bar, the oasis. It was all but deserted in honor of Johnny Alonga.

It was then that she met the Franhops – Arthur and Raina. Arthur, the boy, was wearing his hair twisted and curled in the style popularized by Bob Dylan. Beneath his gold-buttoned, double-breasted blazer he wore no shirt. Raina, the girl, was seated in a far corner of the room staring at an unblemished white wall with wide-open Little Orphan Annie eyes.

"Don't mind her," Arthur said. "She's on acid."

"LSD?" Gillian said.

"Yeah, like acid," Arthur said. "We were all set to play a new game tonight and then she has to go and suck on a cube and ruin it all."

"What kind of game?" Gillian asked.

"Time Machine," Arthur said. "We thought we'd go back in time, all the way back here to the seventeenth century, and see what the cats were doing back then. Then she goes and sucks a cube and ruins the game."

"You mean you think most of the people here live in the seventeenth century?"

"Where else?" he said. "Not you, though, you're something else. Outasight. Hey, do you groove?"

"I'm not sure," Gillian said. "Do you speak English?"

"Hey, later," he said.

That was Arthur Franhop's exit line. Without another word he was gone. He paused just long enough to take his blind-eyed Raina with him, and moments later the quiet suburban night was rent by the sound of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle being fired up.

"Shit!" The expletive came from the last man in the room, the bartender. This was Ernie Miklos, a man who had once tended bar in his youth and willingly played the role at most of the King's Neck parties. For one thing, it gave him an excuse to stay away from his wife Laverne.

"I beg your pardon," Gillian said.

"Shit," he repeated. "That kid, he's shit. What're you drinking?"

"Martini-very-dry."

"That's shit too," Ernie Miklos said. "Burn your guts out."

"That's the way I started the day," Gillian said, "And I guess that's the way I better end it."

There was something about Ernie Miklos that Gillian found vaguely intimidating. Possibly his eyes. Ernie's eyes met her own head-on and then insolently surveyed her from top to bottom. Possibly it was the hair on the back of his hands – so thick and luxurious a growth of hair that it seemed more like fur than hair, more like a paw than a hand. The two open shirt buttons above the loosely knotted tie revealed still another thick stand of hair.

"Where's your wife?" Gillian asked.

"The last time I saw Laverne," Ernie said, "she was drooling all over your husband. Not that I personally give a shit. How do you like it?"

"Very good," Gillian said. "You make a nice martini." She took another sip. It was a nice martini. A nice martini and an odd moment. They stood there, the only people in the room, and they didn't say a word for three, maybe four moments. What to say anyway? Gillian knew that she had nothing at all to say to Ernie Miklos, and quite probably he had nothing at all to say to her. But was she sure? She