Crazy. They wouldn’t do a thing like that. Just the same, he picked up a glass toothmug, the nearest thing to a weapon within reach.
The door opened inward. The movement was stealthy, which was fortuitous, because it gave his keenly alerted senses a split second to pick up a trace of perfume. So, as he grabbed the intruder from behind, his brain telegraphed a reaction quick enough to prevent him crushing the toothmug into Melody Fryer’s skull.
Instead of an automatic, it had been a bottle in her hand. It had hit the wall and smashed.
‘Gee, lover boy!’ she said as they toppled against the door. ‘I didn’t know you cared. Whoops!’ She sank to the floor.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ he managed to say. ‘Don’t move from where you are. I’ll put on the light.’
‘Don’t do that,’ she quickly said.
‘Broken glass,’ he explained. ‘You’ll cut yourself.’
‘Lift me up and put me on the bed. Then I won’t get cut. I want to talk some. That was Campari. Pity. I’m partial to it. However, I have a flask of scotch in my pocket for you, and I think it’s still intact. You won’t mind sharing?’
‘Why shouldn’t I switch on the light?’
‘Because I wouldn’t care to be seen here,’ answered Melody. ‘No offense to you, Jack. It’s just that I’m shit-scared of my boss. Fraternizing with you isn’t on my job card today. Give me a hoist, lover boy. I’m only ninety-eight pounds.’
He carried her to the bed. She was wearing a jumpsuit of some weatherproof fabric. From the feel, it was fleece-lined.
‘Here’s the scotch. I don’t mind using that glass you nearly brained me with,’ she said. ‘Do you have a cigarette?’
He lit a Winston for her, poured her a drink and took a swig from the flask. ‘If you’d knocked, I might have simply opened the door and let you in.’
‘After switching on the light,’ Melody pointed out. ‘Do I have to repeat that this visit is unofficial?’ She curled her legs under her and arranged the pillow against the headboard. ‘Purely social. Aw, c’mon,’ she coaxed him. ‘What do you say to a civilised conversation? Sit down and tell me how you made out with Goldengirl.’
‘You heard about that?’
‘Pete Klugman told me you had an audience with her ladyship after the workout this afternoon.’
‘That’s correct,’ he cautiously answered. ‘I fixed it officially with your boss.’
‘And you now suspect I’ve been sent unofficially to get your reaction?’ said Melody, holding out the glass for more scotch. ‘Don’t fret, lover boy. I can tell you what happened. She stripped and did her floor show in the shower and then stretched out the body beautiful on the slab for you to look at from every angle. And when you took it as a come-on, you found how wrong you were, huh?’
‘I went for conversation,’ said Dryden.
‘She can handle a conversation,’ said Melody. ‘Oh, yes, Goldengirl’s a smart talker. Trouble is, it never alters. When you give her a beauty treatment twice weekly, as I do, it jars a little. Like how she works hard in her training, and what standards she needs to get to Moscow. Like she’s an achievement-oriented girl and she doesn’t mind men looking at the goods so long as they keep their hands off. How do you like that?’ She swallowed the rest of the scotch and used the glass to stub out her cigarette. ‘My, it’s warmer in here than outside.’ She pulled down the zip of the jumpsuit to waist level. In the poor light, it looked like bare skin in the divide. ‘Did you find her stimulating, lover boy? You didn’t stand a chance. Shall I tell you why?’
‘If it pleases you,’ said Dryden.
‘Come closer, then. I’m not radioactive.’
Why refuse? He wanted a woman, and Melody couldn’t signal more clearly that she was available. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out, gently pulling her down. Fumes of scotch, cigarette smoke and Clinique. ‘Tell me why I wouldn’t succeed with Goldengirl.’
‘Kiss me first.’
His hand moved inside the jumpsuit, between fleece and warm skin. She wasn’t wearing underclothes.
She gripped his neck and pulled his face against hers until she was ready to take her lips away. This wasn’t bluff. Melody wanted it badly.
His hand moved across her breast and slipped the suit off her shoulder. He heard her zip tugged down to its limit and he attended to his own. ‘What is it with Goldine, then?’
‘Goldine?’ She moved away from him to free her legs from the jumpsuit. ‘Goldine doesn’t exist. There’s only Goldengirl.’
‘Goldengirl, then?’
She nestled against him once more, and her hand moved between his thighs. ‘Jeez, you should get a license for that... So you want me to tell you why you got nowhere with Goldengirl. She’s a monster, that’s why. I tell you, lover hoy, Frankenstein had nothing on William Serafin. Maybe in time you’ll get to understand, but if it’s the real thing you want, you’ll have to settle for me.’ She rolled on her back, tugging him with her. ‘Now you can fuck me, Jack Dryden, and I don’t give a damn if it’s Goldengirl you think about, so long as you fuck me good.’
Eight
‘Nine-eight’ vows Manley screamed the sports page of San Diego’s daily, the Union.
SAN DIEGO, June 13 — Milton Manley, San Diego Striders’ lastest sprint discovery, is set to dash 100 metres in a world-beating 9.8 in today’s clash with San Jose State speedstar Pete Pagano at the Los Angeles Invitational. Manley, 20-year-old find of the outdoor season, states, ‘They tell me Pagano is the world’s sharpest starter. Sure, he had the edge on me last time we met, over 60 metres in the AAU Indoor, but he’ll find I blast that extra forty like I’m going for Mars. He’ll need 9.8 and a ninety-degree dip to take me Saturday.’
Crushed to the foot of the page by the promises of Manley and other stars appearing at the Coliseum, a paragraph coyly announced:
Today’s track action in San Diego is confined to the Metro Track Club women’s meet. With high-jump record-breaker Darrielle Newman a doubtful starter following a hamstring pull this week, interest switches to the hurdles duel between La Jolla’s Jean Hampshire and UCLA hopeful, Marilyn Pinkton, with an Olympic qualifying standard of 13.2 as a possible prize.
The state of the newspaper, saturated by exposure to steady rain, said more than all the column-inches of predictions. There would be no world-beating performances in the speed events. The guarantees issued with a rubberised, plastic-coated, nonskid, all-weather track didn’t yet include the sunshine essential to superlative sprinting. Even in San Diego in June it could rain on a Saturday.
Up in the Sierra Nevadas the visibility had been so poor by ten-thirty that the Jet Ranger was grounded for an hour, and even when they took off, the prospects of finding a safe route through the cloud screen looked slender.
As scheduled, Serafin, Lee and Klugman had left with Goldine in the Sikorsky, piloted by Lee’s technical assistant, Robb, at eight o’clock, before the visibility had deteriorated. The second party was made up of Dryden, Valenti, Brannon (one of the coaching team, who seemed to have the idea he was in charge) and the pilot who had flown them up from Cambria.
‘Ten flat in seventy-three. Compton Invitational,’ Brannon said, as if that established incontestably his status as flight commander. As he was six foot three in height and must have weighed 200 pounds, the assumption went unchallenged. After that, he relaxed enough to tell them, ‘I’m called Elmer,’ and said no more for the rest of the flight.
Piloting a helicopter through low cloud in the Sierras is not to be rushed. They eventually touched down at the San Diego Heliport at two twenty-five. A taxi delivered them to the stadium at two thirty-eight.