Her face brightened with a smile. "I like to be undressed when I do it," she said, staring at his broad muscled chest. Remo unconsciously pulled in his stomach.
She shut the door behind her and before she reached the bed she was unbuttoning the blouse. She dropped the blouse over the wooden bedpost and forced her hands behind her back to unhitch the bra.
Her stomach was white and flat. Her breasts dropped gently from the bra's cups, but not so far as to show she wasn't firm. The nipples were red and already hardened.
She folded the bra over the blouse and turned to Remo and said, "C'mon, I don't have all day. I have to be back in codes in forty minutes. This is my lunch hour."
Remo forced his eyes away, then threw the towel off the bed. He dropped his trousers and his hesitancy.
She was waiting for him under the sheets by the time he unlaced his shoes. Gently he lifted the sheets and got into bed. She forced one of his arms behind her back, the other between her legs, and whispered, "Kiss my breasts."
It was over in five minutes. She responded with an animal fury strangely without honest passion. Then she was out of bed before Remo was really sure he had had a woman.
"You're all right," she said, wriggling into her white panties.
Remo laid on his back and stared at the white ceiling. His right arm was tucked between his head and the pillow. "How would you know? You weren't here long enough."
She laughed. "I wish we had more time. Maybe tonight."
"Yeah. Maybe." Remo said, "but I usually have instructions at night."
"What kind?"
"The usual."
Remo glanced up at the girl. She was putting her bra back on, Hollywood style. She held it in front of her, points down, then bent forward lowering her breasts into the cups.
She kept talking: "I didn't know what kind of work you do. I mean, I never saw a number like yours on the board before."
Remo cut her off. "What's this board you're talking about?" He stared at the ceiling. She smelled strongly of deodorant.
"Oh. In the recreation room. If you want relationships, you put your room and code number on the board. A man and a woman's number come up and a clerk just matches them up. You're not supposed to know who you'll be doing it with. They say if you know you could get serious and everything. But after awhile, you can figure numbers and wait to put yours in. Like women always have a zero in front of their numbers, men have odd first numbers. You have nine. That's the first time I ever saw that."
"What's my number?"
"Nine-one. You mean you didn't know that? For crying out..."
"I forgot."
She chattered on. "It's a good system. The group leaders encourage it. Nobody gets involved and everybody is satisfied."
Remo glanced at her. She was dressed again and bounding toward the door in her low-heeled shoes. "Just a minute," Remo said, smirking. "Aren't you going to kiss me goodbye?"
"Kiss you?" she said just before she slammed the door. "I don't even know you."
Remo didn't know whether to laugh or just go to sleep and forget about it. He did neither. He vowed never to do his loving in Folcroft again.
That had been more than a week ago, and now he was anxious to get on with the assignments. Not that he relished the work. He just wanted to get out of Folcroft, get out of the cozy little jail.
He rammed the slipper against the gym floor again. There was probably some reason for slippers. There was a reason for everything. But he didn't give a damn anymore. "Well, how about it?" he yelled over to MacCleary.
"Just a minute now. Ah, here he comes."
When Remo looked up, he almost laughed. But the figure shuffling in was too pathetic for laughs. He was about five feet tall. A white uniform with a red sash hung loosely over his very skinny frame. A few white wisps of hair floated gently around his emaciated oriental face. The skin was wrinkled like old yellow parchment.
He wore slippers, too, and carried two thick boards that clapped hollowly with his shuffling gait.
MacCleary, almost deferentially, fell in behind the man. They stopped before Remo.
"Chiun, this is Remo Williams, your new student."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Chiun bowed. Remo just stared. "What's he going to teach me?"
"To kill," MacCleary said. "To be an indestructible, unstoppable, nearly invisible killing machine."
Remo threw his head toward the ceiling and exhaled loudly. "C'mon, Conn. Get off it. Who is he? What's his line?"
"Murder," MacCleary said calmly. "If he wanted, you would be dead now, before you could blink."
The chrysanthemum scent was strong. So it came from the Chink. Murder? He looked like an outpatient from an old age home.
"Want to shoot him?" MacCleary asked.
"Why should I? He's not long for this world anyway."
Chium remained impassive, as if he did not understand the conversation. The large hands folded over the thick wooden planking showed bulging veins. The face, even the slanted brown eyes, revealed nothing but eternal calm. It was almost a violent calm in the face of the recent offer. Remo glanced at MacCleary's dull gray revolver. Then he looked back into the eyes. Nothing.
"Let me see the .38." He removed the revolver from MacCleary's hook. It rested heavily in the palm of his hand. Remo's mind automatically rolled through the pistol qualifications as they had been drilled into him during training. Range, usual accuracy, percentage of misfires, impact. Chiun would be a dead man.
"Is Chan going to hide behind something, or what?" Remo asked. He spun the barrel. Dark shell casings. Probably extra primer.
"It's Chiun. And no, he'll be in the gym chasing you."
MacCleary's hook rested on his hip. It was a sign he had a joke in store. Remo had seen the "precede" several times before. They had trained him to look for the precede in every man. Everyone had it, the instructors said, you just had to learn to find it. The hook on the hip was MacCleary's.
"If I finish him, do I get a week out of here?"
"A night," MacCleary answered.
"So you think I might be able to do it?"
"No. I'm just stingy, Remo. Don't want you to get too excited."
"A night?"
"A night."
"Sure," Remo said, "I'll kill him." He kept the revolver close to his body, about chest high, where they taught him firing was most accurate and the gun safest from fast hands in front.
He aimed the barrel at Chiun's frail chest. The little man remained motionless. A faint smile seemed to gild his face.
"Now?" Remo asked.
"Give yourself a chance," MacCleary said. "Let him start at the other end of the gym. You'd be dead now before you pulled the trigger."
"How long does it take to pull a trigger? I have the initiator's advantage."
"No, you don't. Chiun can move between the time your brain decides to shoot and your finger moves on the trigger."
Remo backed away one step. His forefinger rested gently on the trigger. All .38's of this type had hair firing mechanisms. He lowered his gaze from Chiun's eyes to his chest. Perhaps it was by hypnosis through the eyes that Chiun could slow down his movements. One instructor had said some Orientals could do that.
"It's not hypnosis either, Remo," MacCleary said. "So you can look in his eyes. Chiun. Put down the boards. That'll come later."
Chiun lowered the boards to the floor. He was slow, yet his legs seemed to remain motionless as the trunk descended to the floor. The boards made no sound as they touched the wooden floor. Chiun rose, then walked away toward the far corner of the gym where white cotton stuffed mats were hanging against the wall. As Chiun retreated, Remo's arm extended for accuracy. He did not have to keep the gun close to protect it.
The old man's white uniform was lighter than the mats. Still the coloring was no problem. The afternoon sun glinted off the red sash. Remo aimed just above it. He would go for the trunk and when Chiun was squirming in a blood puddle on the floor, Remo would take five steps closer and put two bullets into the white hair.