Naked Came the Stranger - By Penelope Ashe Page 0,77

recognized his face – the face she had seen on the jacket of a book called Mountaintop.

The photo, however, was no more than a sterile reproduction of the original. Never before had she seen a man with such piercing blue eyes, diamonds blazing out of a square face beneath a mop of coal-blue hair that curled and roamed over head and neck. The nose had been broken more than once, the jaw was firm, the total effect was softened slightly by the full and sensual lips. The author was still in his working garb – jeans with ragged cuffs, a faded denim shirt with rolled-up sleeves. His forearms were thick, powerful, corded with veins and bristling with hair. Gillian noticed the absence of three fingers from his left hand.

The stool beside Caradoc was empty and Gillian walked to it.

"Martini," she said. "On the dry side."

The bartender looked momentarily bewildered and Caradoc roared with laughter.

"Not here," he said. 'Here, Mrs. Blake, you better settle for a beer."

"A beer then," she said to the bartender before turning to Caradoc. "My mistake. I didn't mean to be so radical. How did you know my name?"

"The same way you know mine," Caradoc said. "I read the papers, same as you do."

"You've got me there," Gillian said, smoothing her sweater.

"You didn't have to do that."

"Didn't have to do what?"

"That bit of business with the sweater," he said. "I noticed them without any assistance from you."

"I like your work," Gillian said. "I loved Mountaintop." Mountaintop was the latest. The critics had described it as a bristling, earthy and not unpoetic story of girls on the loose and boys on the bum. Kids with flowers in their hair and fire in their loins, to quote the Time critic. In the novel they had demonstrated for peace, group marriage, male prostitution and free public toilets. In the memorable final scene they had all stripped, guzzled cheap wine and chewed peyote. There had been a wild dance in the firelight followed by the hero expressing his love to a twelve-year-old girl and a three-year-old ewe. Gillian had sensed then, sensed again now, that the author had lived the scene. And that was Caradoc's strong point. Even his harshest critics agreed that he wrote from life, that this was the literature of experience.

"It wasn't a bad book," the author said. "It wasn't as good as some, not as good as Anteaters and Belly Dancers, but it wasn't bad."

As he spoke, the overhead lights flickered once, twice, then remained on. The end of the power failure. Gillian was sorry in a way. The candles that had lined the long dark bar at Morarity's were extinguished one by one; the saloon could now be seen in all its 60-watt splendor. Sawdust on the floor, grime on the windows, glasses coated with dust. The six other patrons of the moment, the regulars, should have been swept out with sawdust; they wouldn't have noticed.

"My place or yours?"

"What?" she said.

"My place or yours?" he repeated. "I'm assuming you don't want this to end any more than I do."

"Yours," she said.

Her intentions were innocent enough. There was no reason to look on Caradoc as a prospect. There was no marriage to be tested. And so, humming gently to herself, she calmly followed the writer as he drove through downhill woodland toward the shore. The house, every window now ablaze with light, sat on a rock base in a protective cove. The tide was high and the bay water had risen above the foundation and lay flat below his living room windows.

The wide tile-floored entranceway to the house was dominated by a huge wire statue, a male nude with an erection. Indeed, the small placard proclaimed the title of the work to be "Male Nude With Erection." Each room held its own array of wonders. Gillian noticed the names – Cezanne, Picasso, Van Gogh, Pollock, Warhol, Rivers – and was suitably impressed. There was a huge portrait of Caradoc's left eye – no mistaking the brilliance of that blue. An oil of Paige Marchand in bra, panties and leather boots. Ivory tusks, a mounted stingray, loudspeakers on every wall.

In the main room Caradoc paused to depress a wall switch that simultaneously dimmed the lights and started the record player – jetting the raucous sounds of the Jefferson Airplane from every available wall.

There were none of the standard overtures. Caradoc simply stood in the center of the huge room and undressed. First his jacket and his shirt, then