Walk on the Wild Side - By Karl Edward Wagner Page 0,130

Wild, Wild Bunch Caper.” He gulped his drink without thinking and moments later regretted it.

“I think I’d like to sit down for a minute,” Webley apologized.

“Drugged drinks!” Miss Steele said brightly. “Just like in ’The Earth’s End Caper.’ Quick, Dane! Sit down here!”

Webley collapsed into the interrogation chair as directed—it was closest, and he was about to make a scene if he didn’t recover his balance. Automatic cuffs instantly secured his arms, legs, and body to the chair.

“Only in ’The Earth’s End Caper,’” said Miss Steele, “I was the one they drugged and fastened into this chair. There to be horribly tortured, unless Harrison Dane came to the rescue.”

Webley turned his head as much as the neck restraints would permit. Miss Steele was laying out an assortment of scalpels and less obvious instruments, recognized by Webley as props from the episode.

“Groovy,” he managed to say.

Miss Steele was assembling some sort of dental drill. “I was always the victim.” She smiled at him with that delightful madcap smile. “I was always the one being captured, humiliated, helplessly awaiting your last-minute mock heroics.”

“Well, not all the time,” Webley protested, going along with the joke. He hoped he wasn’t going to be ill.

“Are these clamps very tight?”

“Yes. Very. The prop seems in perfect working order. I think I really ought to stretch out for a while. Most embarrassing, but I’m afraid that drinking this early...”

“It wasn’t enough that you seduced me and insisted on the abortion for the sake of our careers. It was your egotistical jealousy that finally destroyed me. You couldn’t stand the fact that Stacey Steele was the real star of The Agency, and not Harrison Dane. So you pulled strings until you got me written out of the series. Then you did your best to ruin my career afterward.”

“I don’t feel very good,” Webley muttered. “I think I might be getting sick.”

“Hoping for a last-second rescue?” Stacey Steele selected a scalpel from the tray, and bent over him. Webley had a breathtaking glimpse through the cut-out of LOVE, and then the blade touched his eye.

The police were already there by the time Elisabeth Kent got home. Neighbors’ dogs were barking at something in the brush below her house; some kids went to see what they were after, and then the police were called.

“Did you know the man, Miss Kent?”

Miss Kent nodded her double chins. She was concentrating on stocking her liquor cabinet with the case of generic gin she’d gone out to buy with the advance check Webley had mailed her. She’d planned on fortifying herself for the interview that might mean her comeback, but her aging Nova had refused to start in the parking lot, and the road call had eaten up the remainder of the check that she’d hoped would go toward overdue rent for the one-storey frame dump. She sat down heavily on the best chair of her sparsely furnished living room.

“He was some fan from back east,” she told the investigating officer. “Wanted to interview me for some fan magazine. I’ve got his letter here somewhere. I used to be in films a few years back—maybe you remember.”

“We’ll need to get in touch with next of kin,” the detective said. “Already found the cabbie who let him out here while you were off getting towed.” He was wondering if he had ever seen her in anything. “At a guess, he waited around on your deck, probably leaned against the railing—got a little dizzy, and went over. Might have had a heart attack or something.”

Elisabeth Kent was looking at the empty Glenfiddich bottle and the two glasses.

“Damn you, Stacey Steele,” she whispered. “Goddamn you.”

Lacunae

They were resting, still joined together, in the redwood hot tub, water pushing in bubbling surges about their bodies. Elaine watched as the hot vortex caught up streamers of her semen, swirled it away like boiled confetti, dissipating it throughout the turbulence.

I’m disseminated, she thought.

Elaine said: “I feel reborn.”

Allen kissed the back of her neck and brushed her softening nipples with his fingertips. “Your breasts are getting so full. Are you stepping up the estrogens?”

His detumescent penis, still slick with Vaseline, tickled as it eased out of Elaine’s ass. Allen’s right hand moved down through the warm water, milked the last droplets of orgasm from Elaine’s flaccid cock. Gently he turned Elaine around, kissed her lovingly—probing his tongue deep into her mouth.

“Here,” said Allen, breaking their kiss. He pushed down on Elaine’s shoulders, urging her beneath the foaming surface. Elaine let her knees